Does anyone want to sit down and listen to nineteen
Sousa marches on the trot? Reference Recordings presumably think that
somebody does (in the USA, at any rate) - hence this disc.
Sousa's mastery of the march-form is undeniable, but
equally undeniable is the fact that for over forty years he worked to
an unchanging formula which cannot stand up to the sort of over-exposure
it receives here. Actually he had two formulas: the two-minute-plus
(eight of them here) and the three-minute-plus (eleven). Not without
significance, I think, is the fact that a disc lasting over an hour
could be recorded on a single day.
Still, the disc does raise some points of interest.
1) Only one of the marches is attributed entirely
to Sousa; all the others have been 'arranged' in one way or another.
It's far from clear how much of what we hear is pure Sousa: in any
case, why were these 'arrangements' necessary? - the gushing programme
notes (The Stars and Stripes Forever, a work lasting all
of 3:32, is described as the composer's 'magnum opus') offer no
enlightenment on this point.
2) The typically earnest American earnestness
of approach is well illustrated by the recording of Liberty Bell.
A two-ton replica of the original bell had been shipped in for the
occasion, but the tight time-schedule precluded a preliminary test,
and when the piece came to be recorded, it was found to sound B
natural rather than the F required by the score. So we get both
versions: the original bell makes much the better sound but is musically
absurd. We are also afforded a glimpse into the ponderous 'humor'
of the band's reaction to this.
3) Most importantly, we are told that Sousa's
marches (almost 100 all told) formed only a part of his vast output.
A more imaginatively-planned disc would have contained examples
of his work in other genres.
Performance and sound are faultless. The disc would
provide ideal background music for a garden party or village fête.
Adrian Smith
Dallas
Wind Symphony/Jerry Junkin 
