Poetics
Corporon/North Texas Wind Symph. Klavier K11153
Rejskind: This is one of a long-running series of wind recordings on Klavier by this first-rate orchestra. I think the title may have been chosen at random, but what it contains is worthy of anyone’s attention for both musical and sonic reasons.
The first reason to get it, I think, is Joseph Schwanter’s Percussion Concerto. Now the percussionist in a symphony orchestra is not the one groupies mob at the stage door. Garrison Kiellor once said that the triangle is an instrument for a saint (he said the same thing about the harp, for a different reason). The percussionist is important, but only once in a while. Perhaps that’s why, in 1995, Schwanter was commissioned to write an extended solo piece for the principal percussionist of the New York Philhar- monic, Christopher Lamb. And what a piece it is!
Schwanter says he has long been fascinated by the timbral aspects of music and been attracted to the richly varied sonic resources of percussion. What he composed is nothing less than a masterpiece, drawing on an astonish- ingly diverse panoply of instruments. They are here played by Christopher Deane, backed up by the band’s regular percussionists to say nothing of the rest of the orchestra.
Listen for yourself. He marshals three tom-toms, timbaletas, bongos, a marimba (the only amplified instru- ment in the work), a xylophone which is sometimes struck and sometimes bowed,
76 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
and a varied set of drums of all shapes and sizes, including a bass drum you’ll feel as much as hear. But Schwanter has done more than make noise, for that would be all too easy. He juxtaposes dense and sophisticated melodies for brass and woodwinds with contrapuntal percussion effects. The result, across three movements that occupy more than a half hour, is impressive, sometimes disturbing, often viscerally beautiful.
The playing is wonderful too, and that goes both for Deane and the large ensemble, conducted masterfully by Eugene Migliaro Corporon. The engi- neering, by Bruce Leek, is as good as it gets.
But wait a minute, there’s more! Steven Bryant’s Stampede has a sort
of rodeo atmosphere to it, reminiscent of the music of Aaron Copland. Michael Gandolfi’s Vientos y Tangos (“wind and tangos”) is not always rhythmic, but much of it is. Gandolfi has used famed concert tango composer Astor Piazzola as a model, and I liked the piece very much.
I’m less enthusiastic about Franco Cesarini’s Poema Alpestre, whose length exceeds its breadth, but even without him this recording is chock full of good- ness. The first time you’ll play it for the sound, but I predict you’ll come back for the music.
Film Spectacular II
Black & London Festival Orch. FIM XR24 070
Rejskind: My first impression, if you’ll pardon the pun, is that nobody does music like this anymore. They sure used to. Films had lush ballads as scores, and
there were countless orchestras that would bring out collections of these hummable tunes. Percy Faith was one, Billy Vaughn was another, and Stanley Black was yet another.
This one, from 1963, is special for being part of London/Decca’s “Phase 4” series. Of course Phase 4 did not feature four channels, and the reason for the name is a mystery. Decca (the British company, not the American one of the same name) was known for its realistic ffrr recordings, intended to sound the way an orchestra might from the eighth row of a good hall. Phase 4 was Decca’s attempt to live down that reputation.
The technique was totally opposite: use a lot of microphones, each one very close to an instrument, and dial in lots of stereo separation. Crank up the volume on the pressing, to overcome rumble, hum, whatever. The results were spec- tacular, though not perhaps truly hi-fi.
It had been many years since I had listened to a Phase 4 recording, and of course I had not had the advantage of listening with gear like the Omega reference system. Notwithstanding the very close-in sound, these recordings really did sound good. The dynamics are overwhelming, probably difficult to get onto modern digital (First Impressions Music has used xrcd to do the job). And Stanley Black, here conducting the Royal Festival Orchestra, was a really talented bandleader.
This CD is a reminder that writ- ers of film music back then were not too shabby, and it did my heart good to hear them again. Here’s Lawrence of Arabia, Gone With the Wind, The Magnificent Seven, a suite from My Fair Lady, and even the haunting score from Hitchcock’s Spellbound. I hasn’t heard any of them in a while.
I also couldn’t help noticing that, despite my impressions of the old LPs, they are not truly recorded in ping pong stereo. When there is a clash of percus- sion or brass, you can hear it travel all the way to the other wall and back again. The original engineer, Arthur Lilley, knew what he was doing.
No, nobody does music like this anymore, but a modern engineer, or musician for that matter, could learn a lot by listening to this CD. 
