Fanfare Reviews
from November/December 1995
Reviews: Bestor - Mozart - Divertimento - Marches and Wind Music
BESTOR: Overture to a Romantic Comedy1. Variations for Orchestra1. In Memoriam Bill Evans1. Chaconne for Chamber Winds2. Three Portraits for Wind Octet2. Bystrík Režucha conducting the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra1. Malcolm W. Rowell conducting the Massachusetts Wind Ensemble2. CENTAUR CRC 2216 [DDD]; 52:02. (Distributed by Qualiton.)
Hoping to make the acquaintance of a new source of mainstream Americana with touches of third stream as well (one of the works, after all, is in memory of a great jazz pianist), this reviewer looked forward to a first hearing of a heretofore uncelebrated composer, now probably in his fifties or sixties, with such distinguished teachers as Hindemith, Persichetti, and Mennin.
Unfortunately it is painful to report a sharp sense of disappointment induced by this release, not really because Bestor writes bad so much as boring music, or, to put it more generously, music that seldom rises above a level of offhand competence.
For this listener, the main problem resides in Bestor's overfondness for grayly languid, rhythmically spineless tempos--even when he's writing an "overture" to a "comedy" no less. There's little sense of anticipation, let alone anything faintly comedic, about this overlong fourteen-minute stretch of incessantly modulating textures. Both the shorter Variations and Bill Evans piece partake of this character of constantly fluctuating harmonic planes (one detects the possible influence of Gunther Schuller here), deployed without the mildest sense of contrast or drama--and very little jazz feeling in the latter piece either.
The Chaconne is probably the least misleadingly designated work here, while the Three Portraits include a "Fanfare for George" whose limp execution conveys no sense of joy, and the "Celebration of David" movement is more of a downer than not. These somewhat stiff and approximate sight readings don't help much either.
No doubt Dr. Bestor is an effective and admired teacher at Smith College, which underwrote these recordings. But, with all due respect, let's hope he has better stuff than this lying in a trunk somewhere.
Paul A. Snook
Copyright © 1995 by Fanfare, Inc. Reprinted by permission from Volume 19, No. 2 (November/December 1995), page 212.
MOZART: Serenade No. 10 in B-Flat, K. 361 ("Gran Partita"). Zubin Mehta conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. SONY SK 58950 [DDD]; 49:31.
Despite the billing on the cover, it is of course only the winds and double bassist Rainer Zepperitz that Zubin Mehta conducts in this recording of Mozart's "Gran Partita" Serenade, recorded in Sony's so-called High Definition 20-bit sound. Those winds, including such luminaries as clarinetist Karl Leister, play beautifully, and they have produced a lovely performance, warm, sprightly, and affecting.
I am as surprised as anyone. With rare exceptions, I've heard only pedestrian recordings from Zubin Mehta, and I never found him any better the few times when I observed him live. There is a precedent for my surprise. For different reasons I have rarely warmed up to Otto Klemperer, and yet he too produced a lovely, once indispensable, recording of this work. Klemperer's 1966 recording (reissued on EMI Studio) is still beautiful, of course, but no longer inevitable. It featured a contrabassoon and was played using a text that has since been revised. There have been many fine recordings since, including that of the London Philharmonic Orchestra Wind Ensemble (EMI Eminence), and those conducted by de Waart, Järvi, Marriner, and Colin Davis, whose sober performance may not be to everyone's taste. What the Mehta has to offer is an exceptionally clear recording, not as imposing as Järvi's on Chandos, with its excessive resonance, but more realistic. He also can offer the exquisite playing of his winds. I've always been partial to Karl Leister, whose performances of such works as the Brahms sonatas are stellar. The other soloists are virtually up to Leister's standard. The conducting is unaffected, bringing out, for instance, in a leisurely way the beauties of the Adagio with which the fifth movement begins. Mehta's slow movements are slow indeed, thereby pointing up the contrasts with the faster sections: again the fifth movement demonstrates this tendency, as does the sequence of variations. Each variation is given a separate track number by Sony incidentally, which is a boon to a reviewer and might interest some listeners.
I seem to remember critic B. H. Haggin attributing the success of Klemperer's recording of the "Gran Partita" solely to the instrumentalists, who, he surmised, must have made up for the conductor's disabilities in palpable ways. I will rather give credit where it appears due, and say that Zubin Mehta has produced a fine "Gran Partita." On the debit side, it is not paired with another Mozart work: the Järvi comes with K. 213, the Klemperer with K. 375. Mehta's "Gran Partita" stands alone, as does Marriner's and Mackerras's.
Michael Ullman
Copyright © 1995 by Fanfare, Inc. Reprinted by permission from Volume 19, No. 2 (November/December 1995), page 319.
DIVERTIMENTO: WIND MUSIC OF AMERICAN COMPOSERS. Jack Stamp conducting the Keystone Wind Ensemble. CITADEL CTD 88198 [DDD]; 61:17. Produced by Tom Null. (Distributed by Klavier/ Albany.)
DIAMOND: Ceremonial Fanfare. Tantivy. TULL: Sketches on a Tudor Psalm. STAMP: Divertimento in "F". WASHBURN: Symphony for Band. TOWER (arr. Stamp): Celebration Fanfare from Stepping Stones.
Band music is probably the only area left of "classical" music practice where contemporary works stand a chance of public success. It has a real audience, a solvent publishing industry, and even a host of support services (everything from instrument makers to fabricators of stage risers and uniforms). Of course, the reason for this is that the wind ensemble/band is the major instrumental ensemble found in American schools, from elementary through college. Most children and young adults, if they get any exposure at all to "nonpopular" music, get it through the band. And further, America has an unusual bifurcation of the ensemble: the marching band is a functional group, largely for entertainment at sporting events, while the concert band is more serious in its programming and presentation (though, from some of the extraordinarily "avant-garde" presentations I have seen recently on TV broadcasts of drum-and-bugle-corps competitions, I think even this division is starting to blur).
All this sets the stage for this release, which is beautifully produced and performed. I do not like all the music on it, but at the start I have to salute Jack Stamp. The programming is thoughtful and takes some risks. He has obviously molded the Keystone Ensemble (made up of students, faculty, alumni, and community members of the area around Indiana University of Pennsylvania) into a crack unit. And he is interested not just in new music for band, but new music in a more general way: i.e., he is willing to approach and even arrange music for his ensemble by composers not usually noted for their involvement in the medium.
One issue that flows from the aforementioned success of band music is that we have a whole world of composers who have specialized in the medium. There is a danger in this; in figuring out just what a "band piece" is, these composers can all too easily fall into clichés. Too many band pieces indulge in perky martial rhythms, and rare is the composer who can resist an insistent snare drum riff at least somewhere in the piece. For this reason, the continued vitality of the medium depends on bringing composers with a broader viewpoint into the creative field, composers who can reimagine the band, hear it freshly. There are two particularly good examples of this in this CD. First, David Diamond's pieces are a satisfying addition to the repertoire. The Ceremonial Fanfare does not break any new ground stylistically, but it imbues its grand effects over a minute and a half with some real dignity and avoids cheap effects (or Copland knockoffs). Tantivy is the more important work, and probably the foremost reason to purchase the album. Based on a very famous hunting-horn call (you'll recognize it immediately when you hear it), it is a contrapuntal tour de force, putting its motive through continually shifting transformations, in every level of the orchestral texture. It has the virtue of being a very serious piece that is also a romp. Joan Tower's Celebration Fanfare from Stepping Stones is an arrangement (by Stamp) of an extract from a ballet, and builds to a climax that reminds me a bit of John Adams (though it is not a clone; in fact, the harmonies tend to be more interesting than in many Adams pieces).
On the other hand are Fisher Tull and Robert Washburn's works. Both are teachers of Stamp, and I applaud him for his loyalty. But both are, if not primarily "band composers," nevertheless composers who have taken on that mentality. The Tull Sketches on a Tudor Psalm is cunningly made, using as its source a set of variations the Tallis hymn also used by Vaughan Williams in his Fantasia. There's nothing wrong with it from a technical standpoint; indeed, it shows a profound knowledge of how to make the ensemble sound like a band. But on a level of taste, I find it lacking: making grand gestures where they are not called for, doubling thickly, and overrhythmicizing the material (again that perky drum! I suppose it's because of the origins of the medium, but the militaristic connotations in so much of this literature become annoying, even a little frightening after a while). Robert Washburn's Symphony for Band does not do much better. The ghost of Hindemith lies heavily over this work, and its overly sunny disposition seems a little too much like a TV movie soundtrack. Again, this composer knows what he's doing; my difficulty with the result rests on aesthetic grounds.
Jack Stamp is also a band composer, but one who is far more interesting to me than his teachers. His Divertimento in "F" is a set of studies: Fanfare, Fate, Fury, Faith, and Frolic. Stamp knows all the tricks of his medium, but he also is aware of and open to many other contemporary developments--dissonance, polytonality, asymmetric rhythms, extended instrumental effects, stylistic eclecticism. He also develops ideas concisely in the five-movement form, not burdening material with architectures it can't sustain. In the end, it's an entertaining piece one doesn't have to feel guilty about.
The sound is excellent. It is very immediate, closely miked, and well balanced between sections. It is slightly dry, but I don't object to that: we have become too used, I think, to hearing everything through a haze of reverb, and this recording has the virtue of sounding like an excellent concert recording without the disadvantages of a real concert. The group plays with precise intonation and ensemble, able to tackle tricky rhythms and keep dense textures clear. The recording is, in terms of these production/performance values, probably a must for every U.S. band director, so as to listen to how this sort of thing should be done. With multiple talents of conductor, composer, arranger, and producer, Stamp sets a high standard.
Finally, a word on the sociopolitical front. Looking through the credits, I notice the support of local businesses, the university, and individuals for the whole enterprise. Obviously, the Keystone Ensemble is an occasion for civic pride in Indiana, PA. In an era when our culture is "dumbing down," and trying to trash any enterprise that smacks of the non-commercial, cultural, or aesthetic, attention should be paid to such homespun enterprises that are attempting to do something exceptional in America's backyard. I wish Stamp and his band continued success.
Robert Carl
Copyright © 1995 by Fanfare, Inc. Reprinted by permission from Volume 19, No. 2 (November/December 1995), pages 493-495.
MÄRSCHE UND BLASMUSIK (Marches and Wind Music). Hans-Peter Kirchberg1 and Sebastian Weigle2 conducting members of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. CAPRICCIO 10 499 [DDD]; 57:03.
CHARLOTTE: March. AMALIE: March for the Regiment of Lieutenant General von Saidern. BENDA: Dragonermarsch. J. C. BACH: March of the First Battalion of the Regiment Guard in Hanover. MOZART: Le nozze di Figaro: March. ANON: Parade for the Regiment Gens d'Armes (based on a melody from Doktor und Apotheker by Dittersdorf). Parade for the Regiment Gens d'Armes (based on a melody from Die Entführung aus dem Serail by Mozart). Fackeltanz. STAMITZ: Partitas: No. 21; No. 41. GOSSEC: Suite2. WEBER: March2. Euryanthe: Overture2. WIEPRECHT: Three Marches for Cavalry Music2. DONIZETTI: March for the Sultan Abdul Medjid2. ROSSINI: March for the Sultan Abdul Medjid2.
Those are my own translations of the German titles of the works, based on consultation with colleagues who know the language. Although I know next to nothing about German, I probably haven't done much worse than the gentleman who translated the readable (according to those colleagues) original liner notes into English. When the translations are not just plain wrong--drei as "six" instead of the correct "three," for example--they usually are so literal and stilted that they're virtually unreadable. The musical program originates "from the Royal Private Library of the Berlin Palace," as the disc is subtitled. As far as the music-making, the winds of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra play competently, with a great sense of ensemble in the less- instrumented works especially. For the most part, their performances are authentically styled, but there are occasional lapses in tempo in the conductorless works that make up half the program. While I'll admit that I prefer wind ensembles of the symphonic--not classical--variety, I must say that most of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century music here strikes me as being rather mundane. Comparing the marches that Donizetti and Rossini wrote separately for the Sultan Abdul Medjid proved the most interesting. I doubt that I'll return to this disc often, but some concert band buffs might enjoy the aural history lesson. Unfortunately, unless you read German, the liner notes will be of little help.
Randy A. Salas
Copyright © 1995 by Fanfare, Inc. Reprinted by permission from Volume 19, No. 2 (November/December 1995), pages 508-509.
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