It may be spring where you are, but here we are still reporting windchills!  So that said, here are five great discs that came across my desk over the past month that are worth your attention.

The RCA Film Classics series with Charles Gerhardt as conductor and/or producer continues to roll out and there were several releases again this year to help round out those amazing recordings.  The sound is even cleaner on these new re-issues but I want to highlight one in particular that was slightly different from the rest.  Most people will recognize the song "Laura" and composer David Raksin probably could have retired from public life after the success of the music from the film noir where the theme casts its shadow.  Fortunately, he didn't, and yet his music continues to be less known even with the resurgence of interest in film scores.  Gerhardt was able to get Raksin to come conduct an album of music in Britain for this series and David Raksin Conducts his Great Film Scores is a sheer delight.  It is one of the early examples of a living composer reworking his older score for a recording drawn from concert performances.  Music on this release included selections from his scores for Forever Amber and The Bad and the Beautiful in at times reworked material into a suite format.  The performances are amazing and as with all these recordings, a must for any serious collector of film music.

One wonders if without these RCA releases we'd ever have Heroines in Music either.  This is a new recording from the Carl Davis Collection, reviewed here last week, featuring music from Davis' BBC TV and film work including music from his popular score for Pride and Prehudice.  This is a wonderful release of great British film music whose only "problem" is that it is a bit long fir the sameness of material.  But you know if this was a 2-disc reissue we would all say, go for it!  These are all recent recordings that went through post-production rather quickly and rightly so as they are fabulous.

A brief break from film music here to highlight a gorgeous Chandos CD.  Also reviewed here earlier last month, the Delius disc features to picturesque, and somewhat spiritual journeys through the mountains.  In Appalachia we are moving down the Mississippi River in the imaginings of the composer depicting American vistas and slave families separated from one another.  The other finds us walking through Norway in The Song of the High Hills.  Coming from earlier and late experiences of the composer, these pieces are rich musical depictions of landscapes in a Grieg-like impressionism that is a hallmark of Delius' style.  American music fans should also consider tracking down a recording of his Florida Suite.  These mountain journeys take a more subdued approach unlike Liszt's Berg Symphonie which it obviously owes something to, or to the massive self-referential Alpine Symphony of Richard Strauss.  The earler blog review here has more details for this standout release.

Even if you are one of the handful of people that remembers Slipstream, the resulting symphonic score by Elmber Bernstein, released in a limited edition by Perseverance Records, is an amazing piece of scoring.  It offers a companion score to the composer's Heavy Metal music and comes when the big Star Wars and Horner scores were in vogue again.  The London Symphony, THE orchestra these scores were often recorded in then, is in top form for this music featuring some great thematic writing.  The album was intended to be released concurrently when the film appeared but bad box office meant it never materialized.  So Perseverance has pulled together what is a premiere release of the music supposedly with Bernstein's intentions being realized. 

With a host of new Arthurian legend and period films coming out this year, it is perhaps appropriate that La-La Land was able to release Jerry Goldsmith's score to the love-it-or-hate it Bruckheimer version, First Knight.  Even the original CD was a fan favorite featuring some of the composer's finest orchestral writing that should have been nominated for an Oscar but suffered as a result of the film it was attached to.  Still, LLL has now restored the entire score to a 78-minute CD where one can begin to piece back together the amazing architecture of this music and appreciate it on its own.  It is some of the master's best 1990s scoring to say the least.  Also included is a second disc with the original CD presentation and some alternates.  Another surprising and stellar release from the label that continues to mine film music from the 1990s--yes music that is nearly 20 years old! 

We now head into the busy pre-blockbuster hopeful May season with some interesting musical giants reappearing in big budget opportunities.  The advent of instant downloads makes many scores "available" whether they ought to be or not and this new format, whil allowing many to hear music from every film it seems, still is not necessarily a good thing.  The simple fact is that downloads are not always presented to give the music its best first hearing.  And listening to something like First Knight makes one appreciate that composer's like Goldsmith who knew how to shape an album can help us hear their music apart from the film in ways many current releases simply miss.  Here's to the new round of surprises along the way in the coming month! 

Marquee Mojo
UNLV Wind Orchestra/Thomas G. Leslie
Klavier 11185
Total Time:  59:55
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Klavier is one of the labels that seems to specialize in recordings of wind band and brass recordings.  They do so in often glorious sound and with premiere college ensembles around the country.  The wind orchestra from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas has commissioned many works from contemporary composers and their releases tend to mix a bit of the latest in band composition alongside published classics.  Marquee Mojo is actually an interesting blend of music mostly for the stage or screen with a few little extras thrown in for good measure.  Most of the works recorded come from the ensembles 2010 season—the exception is the Broughton selection which was recorded in 2007.

The disc opens with music by Ron Nelson (b. 1929) one of the country’s best contemporary composers for original band music.  Fanfare for the Hour Of Sunrise (1989) was written for the Aspen Music Festival and is a brief, brilliantly orchestrated, work depicting the rise of the sun in the mountains of Colorado.  Another contemporary premiere is How Deep the Father’s Love For Us composed by UNLV’s Associate Director of Bands, Anthony LaBounty.  It is based on a 1995 hymn tune by Stuart Townend and was composed to honor the memory of director Leslie’s father.  It is cast in a very Appalachian Spring-like Copland style at first and then begins to move into a variety of clusters and wind colors that make quite an engaging work. 

There are three selections on the disc taken from film.  The first of these is a fine arrangement by Guy Duker of the Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront.  Soloists in this performance are simply fascinating and the fast-paced section towards the beginning of the piece is quite breathtaking.  The recording gives its orchestral counterparts a run for its money in this dramatic and fine performance displaying the sheer virtuosity of individuals and whole sections of the ensemble.  Klavier has captured it with great detail.  A suite from The Wind and The Lion by Jerry Goldsmith makes a welcome addition to great film music, though lesser known to general audiences, on disc.  Michael Davis’ arrangement uses the opening fanfare motif as a glue to pull together the different scenes.  The brass statements, and many of the solo wind appearances, of the theme are pretty amazing coming close to matching Goldsmith’s own original soundtrack performance.  Fans of the composer will be interested to hear how Davis arranges this music into an invigorating band suite which also includes some solo cello work.  The piece allows the percussion section to have some fun as well.  Broughton’s “Overture” from Silverado is the exemplar Americana piece for this band release.  It features the sort of sound that ensembles of this sort are well familiar with in their literature.  The arrangement by J. Durward Morsch captures the original quite well with a bit more expanded wind palette for extra color and some unique effects from the percussion section as well.    

Two selections bring us to the stage in unpublished transcriptions for band.  Arthur Sullivan’s music for The Mikado does feature some of his more memorable tunes and seems to continue to be popular.  This is a premiere of an unpublished pops-like arrangement of the overture and three songs from the operetta by teaching assistant David A. Irish.  It is reminiscent of a popular band suite of Sullivan’s Pineapple Poll and features plenty of woodwind runs to make one marvel at the technical ability of these student performers.  Touches of humor in the scoring (bird calls at the end of “Willow, Tit-Willow”, and a spoken line in “Here’s a How-De-Do”) make the piece a good audience-pleasing work.  Teresa Stewart’s transcription of Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture provides this devilishly difficult orchestral work for winds.  The UNLV group does a fine job in this essentially contrasting work to everything that surrounds it on this disc with clarinets holding up with matching what are essentially string parts.  And the arrangement does a pretty good job of transcribing the 18^th orchestral style to its wind band counterpart.

As a sort of encore perhaps, Karl King’s classic Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite March takes us to the circus stage for this perennial band classic in a stunning performance that is unbelievably fast-paced!  Most band students will have played this march, though probably not at this tempo(!), at some point in their careers as it is standard repertoire.  And at any rate is probably next to Sousa’s work, one of the more familiar pieces still played today in circuses.  Articulation is remarkable at this speed and the couple of tempo pull backs for dramatic impact are great.

Thomas G. Leslie’s direction leads to crisp and clear textures in the band throughout the recording which is only occasionally overwhelmed by a slightly ambient sound when percussion are prominent.  This is really a fun disc to listen to with some great new music, a classic repertoire piece, and fabulous new arrangements in stellar performances.  Highly recommended.