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This has something
for everyone. The Susato never fails
to excite and the University of Texas
Wind Ensemble relish the tangy approximations
of the fourth movement Fagot as
much as the denser charge of La Battaille.
Percussionists are kept busy and
I was pleased to hear the triangle amongst
others adding piquancy to Den hoboecken
dans. If I have criticisms they
centre on the recording – the percussion
is somewhat over-recorded in parts of
La Morisque. Of course VW’s English
Folk Song Suite is hardly a stranger
to discographic shores but I enjoyed
the auburn and darkening colours evoked
in My Bonny Boy.
These staples of
the band repertoire are balanced by
two inventive and attractive works that
are here making their premiere recordings.
David Del Tredici’s In Wartime was written
in 2003 during the time of the Iraq
War and is cast in two movements – Hymn
and Battlemarch. It opens in hymnal
hope with high piccolo and low trombones
exploring the registral potential of
a wind band, the percussion opening
into a welter of sound. Del Tredici
introduces Abide With Me in fragmentary
form, stated only to be immediately
broken up before it’s stated, memorably,
in full. The second movement drives
ever onward, sometimes with mechanistic
venom, quoting the Persian national
song Salamati, Shah! and the beginning
of Tristan und Isolde in oppositional
contrast. The dense implacability of
the writing gives way to mysterious
ascending arabesques, vaporous instrumental
fillips by each instrumental section
in solo voices. The work ends with a
wounded siren, a wail of pain as the
composer aptly puts it in his own programme
notes. Some of the sonorities he conjures
put me in mind of Milhaud in La Création
du Monde – especially his writing for
the saxophone - and part of it evoked
Janačék’s
Sinfonietta in its abrupt but striking
brass writing.
The final piece is
Michael Daugherty’s and the one that
gives this disc its title, ‘Bells for
Stokowski’. The composer imagines Stokowski
in Philadelphia listening to the Liberty
Bell at sunrise. After a ringing splash
of percussion, a real metal pile-up,
we hear the saxophone intone the Bachian
theme. This colourful and enjoyable
work cultivates soft and airy sonorities
as well as intermittently abrasive ones.
The coda is a real Stokowskian climax,
with themes punctured by double and
triple tonguing trumpets. Affirmatory
and celebratory indeed. This is the
third movement, incidentally, of his
‘Philadelphia Stories’, commissioned
by Sawallisch and the Philadelphians.
The booklet is helpful
and well annotated. There’s something
for everyone, then, and very attractively
played too.
Jonathan Woolf
The University of Texas Wind Ensemble/Jerry
Junkin