April 23, 2018

  • Classic Farberman Percussion Album Re-Issued

     The All Star Percussion Ensemble

    All Star Percussion Ensemble/Harold Farberman
    Moss Music Group/Vox MCD 10007
    Total Time: 42:31
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

     

    In the 1980s, just prior to the explosion of CDs, record labels began increasing the number of recordings being made digitally.  The Moss Music Group, which included the Vox Classics label (and I believe the Vanguard catalog at one point), launched a whole host of digitally-recorded albums that include some quite excellent releases featuring the Cincinnati Symphony (with some classic Michael Gielen performances), the St. Louis Symphony (with excellent Gershwin and Rachmaninoff sets under Leonard Slatkin), and the Minnesota Orchestra (with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, including a fabulous Beethoven overture and incidental music collection).  One can hope that their catalogue’s acquisition by Naxos, and reappearance on CD at a mid-price point, is an indication that some of these releases will return to the catalogue.  We will be trying to highlight some of these as they become available when possible.

    First though is this rather delightful collection of arrangements made by Harold Farberman who began as a percussionist with the Boston Symphony (the youngest player to ever do so) but was encouraged to consider composition by Aaron Copland.  He would continue his writing, but turn mostly to conducting.  Over the years he would make a complete set of recordings of the Mahler symphonies as well as explore symphonies by Michael Haydn.  His conducting students include Marin Alsop and Leon Botstein.  So it is even more fitting that we get a chance to begin with his first love, percussion.  For the album, recorded in 1982, he assembled 10 performers from major symphony orchestras (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Metropolitan Opera, Royal Danish Orchestra) for this rather delightful album, many of them his own students.

    Farberman’s arrangements manage to both honor his source material and transform them into something unique and new at the same time.  Some may be familiar with Shchedrin’s more percussion-laden Carmen Ballet which was a popular concert work.  Farberman has distilled some of those same familiar Bizet themes into his own Carmen Fantasy.  What strikes the listener in this arrangement that blends pitched and non-pitched percussion in such a way that even the latter seem to provide a pitch in the midst of the different melodic lines.  These tend to be assigned to mallet percussion.  The approach here is then spread to rather more unconventional possibilities in first the “Scherzo” from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the Pachelbel Canon in D, and Berlioz’s “March to the Scaffold” (Symphonie Fantastique).  That these each work so well is a mark of Farberman’s own skill as an arranger and the program itself is aided by the familiarity of the music which enables even the casual listener to appreciate the color shifts that occur here.

    Sometimes the Vox releases could be a bit muddy but that seems to have improved in this repressing.  Some performance sounds still can be discerned but these are really mild considering the quick shifts needed from time to time in the music.  The idea of all percussion arrangements of music is still a seemingly rare one and it will be a rather wonderful thing to have this back in the catalog to delight budding players that might consider taking their skills to another level altogether.  The album featured the Bizet on side one and the other three pieces on side two.  The worst thing really is that it is such a brief release at just over 40 minutes.  The notes and cover art repeat from the original release and there is not much updated here for Farberman’s own bio or other information.  When some of these were reissued in the later 1980s they were put in cardboard sleeves.  These are back in the traditional jewel case.  This is an important release all the same worth tracking down.