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.

Bassoon Concertos (Music by Mozart, Rossini, Kreutzer, and Crussell)
Karen Geoghegan, bassoon. BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/Gianandrea Noseda
Chandos 10613
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

The expressive power and wide-range of the bassoon often are overlooked by most composers who tend to regard the instruments ability for more humorous occupations in larger orchestral works.  There are plenty of pieces that can demonstrate the instrument’s more lyrical quality and there is a fairly rich repertoire of concerti and solos to choose from though there has yet to be a Paganini-like virtuoso on the instrument (which may be due more to the personalities of those drawn to the instrument).

Karen Geoghegan has three previous releases to her credit as she is evidently out to survey some of the rich literature for the instrument.  This new disc from Chandos finds her exploring music from the late 18^th and early-19^th century.  At first glance it seems like the recording is a series of works around Bb, but there is more to the pieces here than meets the eye starting with Mozart’s essential concerto for the instrument.

 Mozart’s K. 191, composed in 1774, is a must perform piece for any student of the instrument and Geoghegan’s approach here is to warm the edges of the music in a beautifully lyrical performance that shows off the central range of the instrument in such perfect phrasing and technical mastery that one is drawn immediately into the music’s melodic ideas aptly supported by the BBC Philharmonic.  The only real quibble is that the cadenzas, which are not credited, are interesting and a bit overlong, especially in the opening movement (it extends the playing time of the whole work out a bit more).  A little more lingering on some of the lower register notes would have been nice too, mostly because Geoghegan’s tone color is so well-created in that register.

I had no idea Rossini wrote a bassoon concerto and this work, discovered in some manuscripts in the 1990s, is still not totally accepted by some scholars as his work.  There is some historical evidence that he wrote such a work because it is mentioned in the obituary of bassoonist Nazzareno  Gatti that such a piece had been written for him.  It is possible it was written for Gatti as a student performance piece back in 1845.  Regardless, the three-movement work is a fairly generic early 19^th century piece with a good solo part.  The pizzicato and lyrical second subject of the opening movement is a nice touch and the dramatic central section has operatic sensibilities.  It is a curiosity that is given a committed performance here.

The short little Fantasie by Conradin Kreutzer is a fairly innocuous work that allows for some display of the performer’s approach to variations in the thematic idea here.  A polish dance helps close of the piece.  It is a real little virtuoso piece with the many runs in the solo part handled so dexterously here that one forgets just how many notes are moving about.  It appears occasionally on recital discs and receives one of its finer performances here.

The disc closes with a piece written for a virtuoso by Bernhard Henrik Crusell in 1829.  This is the last work in the genre by the Swedish composer whose music bears some resemblance to Weber.  It takes its musical material from the French composer Adrien Boieldieu in the first movement and proceeds into a series of variations that are the center of the piece.  The finale allows for Geoghegan to show off the range of the instrument which she does with great aplomb.

Overall this is a wonderful demonstration disc of pieces from this late Classical, early Romantic period of music that features some truly marvelous playing.  The performances are enhanced by a spot-on support of the BBC orchestra under the direction of Gianandrea Noseda.  The CD is recommendable for those interested in an alternative to period-performance recordings of the Mozart and for some interesting, if marginal, works for the instrument.