Let me say at the outset that the playing on this disc
is absolutely outstanding, which should come as no surprise when you
know that The Bassoon Brothers – Mark Eubanks, Robert Naglee, Juan De
Gomar and (sister) Bonnie Fillmore Cox – are all members of either the
Oregon or the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. That said, whether or not
you enjoy this album depends more, I think, on your sense of humour
than on your interest, or otherwise, in the bassoon.
"Just plain hilarious" said the Seattle Times
about The Bassoon Brothers’ previous disc. I haven’t heard it, but humour
is such a personal thing. I well remember laughing like a fool at Rowan
and Martin’s Laugh-In on British television in the sixties. Hilarious
was a word I used about that, even after I realised that my father’s
opinion – feeble – was the right one. We all laughed, though, and many
may laugh along with this disc. But not me, I’m afraid.
"Captured" is a collection of pieces arranged
for ensemble of bassoons by, in most cases, Mark Eubanks, with intermittent
support from a selection of other instruments including guitar and drums.
There is one original piece, Pigs, for four double bassoons,
by the British composer Alan Ridout, which I find, perhaps significantly,
the funniest piece of the lot by a fair margin. In any event it exploits
in a quite uncanny way the particular qualities of this very particular
and limiting ensemble. For the rest many of the pieces seem to have
been chosen primarily because they are totally unsuited to the group,
and therefore the result will inevitably be funny. In some cases this
works quite well. Stephen Sondheim’s beautiful Send in the Clowns
suffers more from a horrible and quite gratuitous change of key than
it does from the arrangement, but I won’t be abandoning Glynis Johns
all the same. Whether Strauss’s Pizzicato Polka will have you
rolling in the aisles depends on your sense of humour, but I find the
original Three Little Maids far funnier in context than I do
here. The disc opens with an arrangement for bassoons and other instruments
of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, called here Fanfare
for the Common Bassoonist. I quote from the liner notes: "…which
has become a popular audience participation number. Kazoos are provided
and the audience encouraged to stomp and clank things for the percussion
effects." Nothing in this description can prepare the unsuspecting
listener for the truth! Incidentally, the kazoo, not one of my favourite
instruments, features in several of the arrangements, and I suspect
that an enthusiasm for the kazoo might be the key to the humour here.
Mr. Eubanks also enjoys alluding to other works. So
even if it’s unsurprising to find a Lady of Spain dancing her
way across the set of Carmen, quite what Batman is doing there
is anybody’s guess. And Rogers and Hart’s My Funny Valentine
is embellished by references to Tchaikovsky’s swan, Mozart’s Figaro,
The Pink Panther and no doubt many others too erudite for me
to have noticed.
To be fair, humour is not the only ingredient. Hey
Jude is given fairly straight, and the disc ends with an attempt
to make a touching thing out of the Londonderry Air played by
bassoons.
If this is the kind of thing you like you shouldn’t
hesitate, especially as the playing is of such quality. All the same,
and to be terribly boring, I think this album does nothing for those
who know little about the bassoon and appreciate it still less. It is
a most expressive, if perhaps limited, instrument. The opening of Tchaikovsky’s
Pathétique and the jolly tune in Chabrier’s España
give an idea of the instrument’s range of expression, and there are
countless examples of wonderful bassoon writing in the music of Ravel
and other French composers. Then let’s not forget the sublime counterpoint
to the second statement of the Ode to Joy theme in the finale
of Beethoven’s 9th, or Bartók’s way with the bassoon section
in his Concerto for Orchestra. But this is perhaps to miss the
point: even if most of these arrangements seem to aim for a kind of
slapstick humour which undermines, to my mind, the dignity of the instrument,
you might well react quite differently.
There is one piece I’ll be going back to though, an
arrangement of "Smokey" Robinson’s My Girl which achieves,
almost uniquely here, what a good arrangement should, which is to say
that the original is transformed in its new setting into something else,
something which works, and which is, in this case, both beautiful and
even strangely moving.
William Hedley
CRYSTAL RECORDS CD875
[64.39]