MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY

Ives - Variations on America The President's Own United States Marine Band Naxos 8.570559

For over two centuries the prestigious United States Marine Band has been renowned for its precise articulation, impeccable intonation, awesome ensemble work and lethal accuracy. Its second volume for the Naxos Wind Classics series is devoted to the music of Charles Edward Ives, the feisty son of a Connecticut bandsman. He was a bipolar prankster and prophet, a practical man and a visionary in both business and art who is often considered to be the spiritual father of American music. Though Ives himself penned a number of concert marches roughly modelled after Sousa, his was not the elaborate, polyphonic concert band of our day. Consequently this album consists entirely of contemporary editions and arrangements, some quite ambitious, including takes on Decoration Day and the Emerson movement of the “Concord” piano sonata, along with several highly effective song transcriptions. The 21 selections on this disc are admirably programmed into thematic sets illustrating Ives’ diverse and often incongruous aspects.
 
Assembled directly from the Marine Band’s own extensive archives, the selections vary somewhat in audio quality, though the best of them are very impressive. Naxos has done us all a great favour by making these outstanding performances more widely available.
 
Daniel Foley

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Under the Sign of the Sun - French Works for Saxophone and Orchestra Claude Delangle; Singapore Symphony Orchestra; Lan Shui BIS BIS-CD-1357

 
In his ninth fine release on the BIS label, saxophonist Claude Delangle (Professor at the Paris Conservatory) looks back to the standard French concerto repertoire. Legitimized as a “classical” instrument in the early twentieth century, the saxophone gained a significant repertoire from composers such as Ibert, Schmitt, and Milhaud. 
 
Ibert’s Concertino da camera remains perhaps the most important work in the saxophone repertoire. Originally for saxophone and eleven instruments, its treatment here is with augmented strings. Delangle’s smooth technique and crystalline tone amaze the listener as he acrobatically shifts registers.
 
Corsican composer Henri Tomasi’s Concerto is a tour de force for soloist and orchestra. Its cyclical form is reminiscent of Franck, and the orchestration is as rich as the interludes from Pelléas et Mélisande. Listening today, I hear this work as a score to a movie in which the saxophone is the protagonist.
 
Three pieces get their original treatment with orchestra on this disc: Paule Maurice’s Tableaux de Provence is a recueil of miniatures evoking the pays d’Oc; Florent Schmitt’s Légende is an improvisatory arabesque; and Milhaud’s dance-like triptych Scaramouche is light and fun.  Regularly heard in versions with piano, it is a pleasure to hear the orchestral accompaniment to these three, and Lan Shui leads the Singapore Symphony Orchestra with skill and bravado.
 
But it is the soloist who shines. Delangle continues to secure his place in history amongst the greatest saxophonists – his playing combines the clean articulation of Marcel Mule and the stratospheric range of Sigurd Raschèr. At home in the repertoire of his compatriots, Delangle’s refinement of technique and sound solidifies the saxophone’s place in front of the orchestra.
 
Wallace Halladay
 
Concert note: Reviewer Wallace Halladay is the featured soloist in Ibert’s Concertino, Schmitt’s Légende and other works with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony on October 18 and 19. On October 20 the Muskoka Saxophone Society presents Saxorama 2007 with the Huntsville Saxophone Ensemble, the Gravenhurst Saxophone Quartet and the Muskoka Saxophone Choir at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, Hunstville.

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Parra, Arturo – Voz Arturo Parra ATMA ACD2 2575

 
“Voz” is an enigma. I really can't figure it out. Not that I haven't tried. I listen and intently follow the comprehensive trilingual liner notes which provide an in-depth “Narrative” of each of the four three-part musical sections of guitarist/composer Arturo Parra's self-proclaimed “sound poem”. There are ships and water and fire and poets and rain and sirens and so on. I read and reread as I listen. Maybe there is just something wrong with my stream of consciousness.
 
Then the most amazing thing happens. I lose the liner notes. Can't find them anywhere. Now I am forced to only listen to the music. Whoa!! Maybe I just want to write my own story. Parra plays with a free spirited sense of musicality that makes me sit really, really straight in my chair. There are exquisite melodic interludes, seductive minimalistic sections, and heart-thumping rhythms. Parra's intelligent mastery of the guitar and subtle vocalizations are only slightly overshadowed by his unique compositional acuity. Add to this an electrifying performance, and I succumb to over 60 minutes of uninterrupted musical joy!
 
The liner notes miraculously reappear from the depths of the sofa. No longer are the sirens such a mystery to me. "Voz" becomes a gem in my musical jewellery box!
 
Tiina Kiik

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Sofia Gubaidulina - Rejoice!; Silenzio; In Croce Telesto Trio  Stichting Camenae 1 (www.camenae.eu)

 
Sofia Gubaidulina (b.1931) belongs, along with her late colleagues Edison Denisov and Alfred Schnittke, among the top tier of Russian composers of our time. She first made her mark as a film composer but by the early 1980s Gubaidulina’s concert work became better known abroad through Gidon Kremer's championship of her violin concerto Offertorium.
 
In the last two decades Gubaidulina has gained an audience in Europe and has been generously recorded by international labels. Here we have an independent label championing her smaller-scale compositions performed by the European-based Telesto Trio.
 
As these three mature works written between 1979 and 1991 attest, there is nothing small-scale in Gubaidulina’s musical or emotional ambitions, even though they are only for two or three instruments. While it can be forcefully dramatic, it is also not afraid to pause, nor of silence. At other moments it is all delicacy and colouristic sonic effects – “where pure sound is weighed and felt” as the liner notes evocatively put it. Her music here sounds to me even in the more lively dance-like moments to illustrate superbly what Russians like to refer to as their “great Russian soul”. 
 
The Telesto Trio was founded by three accomplished chamber musicians, Tiziana Pintus, violin, John Addison, cello and Merima Kljuco, accordion, in order to perform the music of Sofia Gubaidulina and they certainly do the works proud, playing with passion and secure musicianship of the highest order. The recorded sound is clear and dynamically full. Recommended.
 
Andrew Timar