CD Review
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Three College Discs
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While listening to a lot of music while holidaying on Crete, I wondered whether
we had been as inclusive as we might in following up the theme of Art which
Felix Hauswirth and his Swiss committee devised for the Lucerne Conference.
I came across several pieces which we on the planning committee might have put
forward for inclusion.
COLOURS AND CONTOURS by Leslie Bassett
Another fine work from an early era is Colours and Contours, re- introduced
to me in a fine performance by WASBE member Eric Rombach-Kendall and the University
of New Mexico Wind Symphony. This was a programme from the 1999 CBDNA Conference
which I would recommend to anyone. Opening with a neat performance of Frank
Ticheli's Postcard, full of jokes and twists, the Bassett is an excellent
foil to this. Two concertos are featured on this disc, a fine performance by
the Principal Trumpet of the New York Philharmonic, Philip Smith, of Turrin's
Chronicles, a virtuoso work of importance, a worthy companion to the
Richard Rodney Bennett Trumpet Concerto. This was paired with the
Concerto for Marimba (8 hands) and Wind Ensemble by James Mobberley. Motown
Metal by Daugherty is a jokey work for brass ensemble, a terrific piece
in the tradition of Pacific 231 or the Iron Foundry, good fun and innovative.
The last piece is Masquerade Variations on a Theme of Serge Prokofiev
by Stephen Michael Gryc, a theme and five variations which are also very entertaining
COLOURS by Roger Cichy
Another piece which might certainly have had a place at Conference is Roger
Cichy's Colours, a suite in six short movements which was introduced to me by
William Berz and his splendid Rutgers Wind Ensemble on Mark 3570 MCD, Time a
Maniac Scattering Dust. Written in 1997, Cichy avoids most of the clichés
of jokey band music, while using many of the idioms of the Big Band and the
post-Copland Americana style. I think that this is a work which community bands
and professional bands might well explore for future programmes.
Also on this CD I enjoyed the restrained colours of October
by Eric Whitacre, a reflective almost introvert little idyll of about six and
a half minutes. Three works by WASBE members also appear here, Yiddish Dances
by Adam Gorb, programmed for the 2001 Conference but unfortunately cancelled,
given here in its full five movement version. and two works which might be useful
as openers, Whirr, Whirr, Whirr!!! By Ralph Hultgren and Pastime
by Jack Stamp
CHRISTINA'S WORLD by Kenneth Fuchs
Years ago when I was teaching in High School in the West Country of the UK,
I ran an Arts Association and booked a visiting exhibition of contemporary art
of which only one painting remains in my memory, Andrew Wyeth's evocative painting
of Christina's World. A work with that title by Kenneth Fuchs gives the title
to a fine CD by WASBE member Gary Green whose University of Miami Wind Ensemble
is accurate, well balanced with good intonation and some excellent soloists.
While I am not sure that for me Fuchs completely recaptures what I recall of
the loneliness of Christina's pose and her illness, he writes a work of over
11 minutes of some substance; much of it is impressionistic, some is minimalist,
but I find the scoring attractive, the ideas interesting, and this is a work
I would happily recommend. I know nothing about jazz, but I enjoyed Timothy
Broege's No Sun, No Shadow, a tribute to Charlie Mingus which seems to
range freely over a number of differing moods. I don't know how much of the
work is improvised, but this seems to me to be an impressive vehicle for a jazz
saxophone player, especially if you have one of the calibre of Whit Sidener.
Daugherty's Niagara Falls is a work in which I am always a little disappointed.
The introduction is quite evocative, and I enjoy the percussion passage that
follows, but this is an accompaniment to a minimalist section which I find really
quite banal and noisy. I am afraid that I find many of the gestures in Niagara
Falls empty and repetitive, but I do enjoy the same composer's Dead Elvis.
Gordon Jacob fulfills a need in the solo wind repertoire, like Hindemith writing
for nearly every instrument, but I am not convinced that we need an arrangement
of the bassoon concerto, since it is nothing much more than academic exercise,
charming but un-necessary, and in this disc of American composers born between
1947 and 1956, rather out of place.
I often find Gillingham's music too inflated and grandiose, but his little Concertino
for Four Percussion and Wind Ensemble on the whole avoids these traps until
the final peroration which for me descends briefly into vulgarity. This is a
very useful showpiece for the percussion section, an all too brief eight and
a half minutes.
LES COULEURS FAUVES by Karel Husa
Finally, in my view one of the best pieces by a WASBE composer, not yet heard
at Conference, is Karel Husa's Les Couleurs Fauves, one of Karel's strongest
works and one I should love to programme. I wonder what it is that turns us
on to one work rather than another, and one composer rather than his or her
colleague. Listening on the island of Crete to a huge selection of compact discs,
I have tried to analyse what it is I am looking for and discovering. What I
discover too often, and what turns me off more than most, is academic notespinning,
busy fanfare figures, jokey cartoon episodes, light fugues with crossrhythyms,
sentimental tunes, usually on euphonium or saxophones, clumsy switches of mood,
harmonic changes which jar, in fact the cliché-ridden energetic, often
virtuosic style of writing for the wind band, music which as Simon Rattle puts
it "won't frighten the horses".
T.R. - WASBE President