Gail KUBIK (1914-1984)
Divertimento No. 1 (1959) [15:41]
Gerald McBoing Boing (1950) [13:42]
Divertimento No. 2 (1958) [10:29]
Symphony Concertante for Trumpet, Viola, Piano and Orchestra (1951-53) [29:23]
Vivian Choi (piano), Terry Everson (trumpet), Jing Peng (viola)
Robert Schulz (percussion), Frank Kelley (narrator)
Boston Modern Orchestra Project/Gil Rose
Reviewed as 24-bit download from press preview
Recording information not supplied
BMOP SOUND 1085 SACD [79:15]
American composer Gail Kubik had quite the adventure of a musical career. Born in South Coffeyville, Oklahoma, he toured with his mother and brothers as “The Kubik Ensemble” during the Great Depression. Kubik’s formal training took him from the Eastman School of Music to The American Conservatory in Chicago and on to Harvard. In Chicago, he was a pupil of Leo Sowerby; at Harvard, he studied under Walter Piston and gained a supporter in Nadia Boulanger. Kubik became a staff composer at NBC radio in 1940 then moved to the Motion Picture Bureau of the Office of War Information as the US joined World War II. He won the Prix de Rome in 1950, wrote film scores for Hollywood, then soured on the industry and returned to Europe in the 1960s. He ended his career as a professor at Scripps College in southern California, composing his last major work in 1970.
Kubik’s style has strong traces of early Copland and Neoclassical Stravinsky but with a sense of fun infusing its boundless energy often lacking in his more serious contemporaries. Jazz and American folk music became part of his musical voice as well. Film scores undergird much, though not all, of his concert music. Three of the four works on this disc incorporate film music, most obviously Gerald McBoing Boing. This 1950 animated film for Columbia Pictures depicts the titular Gerald, a boy who only “speaks” in noises. After baffling his family, the doctor, and the schoolteacher, a radio executive saves Gerald from further misfortune by hiring him to produce sound effects for radio programs. The whimsical rhyming text is by Dr. Seuss.
The concert version features some modifications from its cartoon original. To replace the visual cues, Kubik added additional lines for the narrator. Kubik also substituted percussion instruments for the noises used in the cartoon when Gerald “speaks.” Finally, Kubik has Gerald performing percussion music for the radio station, not sound effects. In the cartoon, Gerald is responsible for the galloping hooves, creaking doors, and gunshots in a serial Western. In the concert version, Gerald performs a solo percussion cadenza that lasts several minutes.
Tenor Frank Kelley provides narration that is characterful without going quite over the top. Narration over music always risks over-acting but Kelley remains just within the bounds of taste, at least for me. The orchestra plays with incredible verve and spirit, in total sympathy with Kubik’s bouncy, incident-packed style. Percussionist Robert Schulz handles his twenty or so percussion instruments with aplomb. Narrator, percussionist, and orchestra are ideally balanced and the sound is clear as crystal.
Competition comes from a MusicMasters disc with Dino Anagnost leading the Little Orchestra Society and Carol Channing narrating. She performs with a heavy hand – too heavy for me. The recording favors her, relegating the music to the background. The tempo is also much slower. This helps Channing articulate the text’s rhythms and rhymes but saps the energy from Kubik’s colorful score.
Slightly stiffer competition comes from a Delos disc (DE6001) with the XTET Chamber Ensemble under Adam Stern. Werner Klemperer, actor and son of conductor Otto Klemperer, provides the narration. Klemperer is the most restrained of the three – relatively speaking – but each create “voices” for the characters of the father, doctor, etc. Delos has the quickest tempo, particularly in the percussion cadenza, putting it closest to the breakneck pace of the cartoon. It is over in only 12:03. The balance is better than on MusicMasters but neither can hold a candle to the new BMOP disc.
Kubik’s Symphony Concertante also began life as a film score before the composer received a commission for a work with an unlikely trio of soloists. The crime capers of the B-movie C-Man became the largest and most “serious” abstract work on the album. Touches of jazz come to the fore in the restless first movement. The middle movement is a fascinating “very long, increasingly dramatic song,” as the composer described it, for the three soloists alone. The trumpet and viola often play in unison underscored by the piano in a unique fusion of timbre and texture. The finale is loosely in rondo form, with a recurring theme contrasted with episodes of differing material. It is even more restless and rhythmic than the first movement, setting up something of a perpetual motion pattern before relaxing into slower jazz elements in the middle of the movement. The soloists have near-constant work throughout the Symphony Concertante but handle their parts with ease and style. Gil Rose again leads the orchestra in a performance of impeccable precision and freshness.
The two Divertimenti are just that, diverting pieces made up of short movements with semi-descriptive titles. Divertimento No. 1 was adapted from the score to the animated film Transatlantic: A Short Cut through History and includes a “Seascape” alongside an Overture, Humoresque, Scene Change, and Burlesque. An out-of-place quotation from Bach’s Partita No. 3 for solo violin provides the recurring humor in the Humoresque and the Seascape makes a welcome change of pace and texture from the bustling music of the Overture and Scene Change. The “impudent” quotation from Bach, in the composer’s words, returns to finish off the Burlesque. The Divertimento No. 2 did not derive from a film score and is slightly more relaxed than its counterpart. Here another Overture leads to two Pastorales, a Puppet Show, a Dialogue between oboe and viola, and a Dance Toccata. Once again, the performances are all one could wish in this entertaining and lively music.
This was my first experience listening to Gil Rose and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project but I am positively itching to hear more. Though I listened to these 24-bit downloads with only a normal stereo setup, the engineering is incredible, providing a level of clarity that made me feel I was sitting at the center of the orchestra yet able to hear every note from each instrument, soloists included. Comprehensive liner notes are a wonderful bonus. If Gail Kubik’s blend of Neoclassicism and jazzy fun appeals to you, run out and buy this disc immediately. I cannot imagine Kubik’s music sounding better for a long time to come.
Christopher Little
