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SaleDevienne: Flute Concertos, Vol. 3 / Gallois, Swedish Chamber Orchestra
Naxos · Jun 2017CD$19.99$13.99 -
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Price: Songs of the Oak - Orchestral Works / Jeter, Württemberg Philharmonic Reutlingen
Naxos · Nov 2022CD$19.99 -
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Poems and Rhapsodies / Ivakhiv, Shao, Sirenko, Ukraine National Symphony Orchestra
Centaur Records · Feb 2022CD$17.99 -
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Brahms: Symphonies 1 & 4 / Jansons, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
BR Klassik · Jun 2012CD$29.99 -
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Strauss: Symphonic Poems / Weigle, Frankfurt Opera & Museum Orchestra
Oehms Classics · Mar 2020CD$37.99 -
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Richard Flury: Orchestral Music, Vol. 5
SYMPHONY 1 POEM OF ECSTASY
Lutoslawski: Orchestral Works Vol 5 / Wit, Polish Rso
From the composer's full maturity comes his only work for chorus and orchestra, the 'Three Poems of Henri Michaux.' The score specifies that the two ensembles are only loosely coordinated, and each has its own conductor. The middle movement is a brilliant evocation of a crowd on the verge of riot. Finally there is 'Mi-Parti,' from 1976, a two-part single-movement work written for the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. As always in this series, the performances are completely competitive and offer much repertoire not available elsewhere--and all at a budget price.
Rutter: Mass Of The Children / Brown, Clare College Choir
Hearing this work again, I was struck by little reminders of other composers and works, such as Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms (Gloria), Fauré's Requiem (Sanctus), and even in the baritone/soprano duet in the Kyrie, a bit of (gurk!) Andrew Lloyd Webber. But these are tiny, endearing moments in a grand and often enchanting work that contains some very clever, catchy, and masterfully written sections for adult and children's choir. Rutter's setting of Blake's poem The Lamb (appropriately part of the Agnus Dei) could stand alone as a concert piece. I also love how Rutter works the tune of Tallis' famous "Canon", sung to Thomas Ken's "Glory to thee, my God, this night", into the closing Dona nobis pacem.
I found it difficult, however, to warm up to Rutter's song cycle Shadows, for baritone and guitar. It has its moments of artful melodic writing and interesting guitar figures, but it often seems as if the two parts are at odds, not comfortable in each other's company. And Jeremy Huw Williams isn't the best advocate: his wide vibrato often obscures pitch, and his phrasing can be inelegant and doesn't always coincide with the musical line. The Wedding Canticle, for the unusual combination of choir, flute, and guitar, is a gentle, lovely piece that has all the marks of Rutter's most beloved style--flowing, inviting melody and a natural rhythmic feel that ideally captures the sense and structure of the text. [4/27/2006]
--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com
Devienne: Flute Concertos, Vol. 3 / Gallois, Swedish Chamber Orchestra
Francois Devienne performed as an orchestral bassoonist and flautist but rose to fame as an operatic composer. His greatest achievement, however, lies in his sequence of Flute Concertos, of which this is the final volume. Despite his failing health, the four works on this recording demonstrate the hallmark combination of melodic elegance and graceful virtuosity that characterizes Devienne’s flute concertos and are among the most attractive of their time. Concerto No. 10 is one of his masterpieces, distinguished equally by the beauty of its thematic material and its confident, cohesive musical structure. Patrick Gallois belongs to the generation of French musicians leading highly successful international careers as both soloist and conductor. From the age of seventeen he studied the flute with Jean-Pierre Rampal at the Paris Conservatoire and at the age of 21 was appointed principal flute in the Orchestre National de France, under Lorin Maazel, playing under many famous conductors, including Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Pierre Boulez, Karl Bohm, Eugen Jochum, and Sergiu Celibidache. He held this post until 1984, when he decided to focus on his solo career, which has subsequently taken him throughout the world.
In the Poet's Garden
Fuchs: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 / Wilson, Sinfonia of London
Grammy-Award-winning Kenneth Fuchs (born 1956) is without doubt one of American music’s leading orchestral composers. His orchestral output has grown and developed to encompass a wide range of genres, from overtures and tone poems to suites and concertos (ten to date, including ones for string quartet, electric guitar, and piano, the last entitled Spiritualist), inspired by a diverse range of subjects, testimony to his wide sympathies and fields of knowledge. His output includes chamber music (including five string quartets), solos and duos, vocal and choral music, and four chamber musicals. Cloud Slant is a virtuoso orchestral concerto based on three of Helen Frankenthaler’s canvasses: Blue Fall (1966), Flood (1967), and Cloud Slant (1968)–not just musical depictions of them but also the composer’s reactions to their artistic sweep and power.
The flute was Fuchs’ first instrument, so it was inevitable that he would compose a flute concerto. However, it was not until 2019 that he set about the task – for the flautist Peg Luke, to whom the concerto is dedicated. As is customary of compositions by this composer, the concerto carries a descriptive title, Solitary the Thrush, a reference to lines from Whitman’s elegy for Abraham Lincoln, 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d'. Commissioned by the Californian Musique Sur La Mer Orchestras, Pacific Visions is scored for string orchestra, and is a single, dynamic movement sub-divided into five sections. Quiet in the Land, a Poem for Orchestra is a revision of a chamber work Fuchs composed in 2003, inspired by the rolling prairie of the Midwestern United States and the ‘immense arching sky’ under which it sits, cast against the impact of the Second Gulf War which had then recently broken out. The orchestral version heard here was composed in 2017 for the Phoenix Symphony. The album was recorded in Surround Sound, and is available as a Hybrid SACD and in Spatial Audio.
REVIEW:
The scores, as heard here in gloriously deep-staged and brilliant sound, are awash with oxygen and rich in melody. The players and conductor are celebrities and their playing is of a piece with that hard-won status.
The sound style of these four pieces, written between 2016 and 2021, is inviting; there are few complexities of texture. The scores are oxygen-rich and their skies are blue Californian or Mid-West vaults. The explosion of cornflower blue is that of Hockney’s A bigger splash and almost has you reaching for the aural equivalent of Ray-Bans. His sound signature is stable and uniform without being tedious. Allowing for passing echoes of others, like Martinů, he has his own sound and you can almost hear him intoning his article of faith: to thine own self be true.
The first piece is a concerto for orchestra in three movements: Cloud Slant (2020-2021). Impressions flood in: a Bernstein brilliance, succulent softness, very exposed Britten-like writing, as in the Grimes Interludes. It’s all superbly recorded[.]
The booklet notes are by Guy Rickards – so we are in safe hands – and are in English, German and French. They tell us much of what we need to know. Even so, I would have liked a lot more about what the music meant to the composer, a fuller biographical setting and what stung Fuchs into creating the music.
Fuchs has a brilliant tonal voice and here it is heard through a medium that equates to un-smeared dustless glass.
-- MusicWeb International
Ireland: A London Overture / Wilson, Halle Orchestra
Currently there seems to be no stopping the resurgence of interest in John Ireland's music. His cause is certainly being helped by a number of new and reissued recordings, a splendid biography The Music of John Ireland by Fiona Richards (2000) and the hard work by the John Ireland Charitable Trust.
It is not difficult to imagine a wry and knowing smile of satisfaction on the face of Ireland's great teacher Sir Charles Stanford. Although their relationship was often fraught and his teacher's methods considered harsh the influential Stanford loved to see his pupils having success. Ireland certainly came a long way from his days as a vulnerable young student at the Royal College of Music (1897-1901). An easy target for ridicule by attending his early classes wearing knickerbockers and boots; goodness knows what psychological damage he was caused. In 1898 the great master Stanford said to his young pupil, 'All water and Brahms me bhoy and more water than Brahms …Study some Dvořák for a bit and bring me something that isn't like Brahms' ('Charles Villiers Stanford' by Paul Rodmell, Ashgate 2002). Stanford's rebuke seemingly did the trick and Ireland soon produced his precocious and charming Sextet for clarinet, horn and string quartet.
The opening track of this Hallé label disc is the symphonic rhapsody Mai-Dun that Ireland completed in 1921. It seems that the score was inspired by Maiden Castle, the Iron Age hill fort, a structure that reflected Ireland's great interest in historic sites such as fortifications and pagan burial sites. Throughout one is aware of the variegated nature of the score alternating the serious nature of war with calmer passages representing peace.
The tone poem The Forgotten Rite was composed in 1913/14. The work is a product of Ireland's interest in the archaeological sites on the island of Jersey and his fascination with the Arcadian vision of the Greek God Pan. A strong undercurrent is the sense of mystery and one can easily imagine the scene of dawn breaking over a stormy seascape.
The inspiration for the orchestral overture Satyricon from 1944/46 was literary. The character of the boy Giton from the 'Satyricon' of Petronius Arbiter appealed strongly to Ireland. I enjoyed the energetic and effervescent rhythms that at times seemed distinctly Bernsteinesque. With shimmering and soaring string melodies of increasing intensity Ireland inhabits a soundworld close to that of say Max Steiner's score to Victor Fleming's Hollywood blockbuster Gone with the Wind (1939). I loved the strong bucolic feel of the solo passage for clarinet followed by the flute at 4:01-4:57.
Also in the year 1946 Ireland was commissioned to write the score to the film The Overlanders. The Harry Watt film recounted the hazardous journey of driving cattle across the vast country of Australia. John Wilson conducts the five movement suite prepared by Sir Charles Mackerras and published in 1971. I was reminded of the suitability of Ireland's music to Baz Luhrmann's film Australia the 2008 epic romance starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman which shares an uncannily similar plot to that of The Overlanders. In particular I enjoyed the third movement Intermezzo: Open Country which is convincingly evocative of Jackaroos on horseback driving herds of cattle across the Australian bush.
In the manner of Elgar's Cockaigne Overture (In London Town) and Vaughan Williams' A London Symphony Ireland was inspired by the sights and sounds of London to write an orchestral score. His A London Overture (1936) is a reworking of the earlier Comedy Overture from 1934 scored for brass band. With music that never reaches anywhere close to the heights of Elgar and Vaughan Williams, Ireland's moderately convincing score seems to lose its way especially in the middle section.
In 1942 Ireland was commissioned by the British Ministry of Information to write a morale boosting patriotic score; the Epic March was the result. It seems that the score contains several musical references to various personalities that were significant in Ireland's life. At times in the Epic March I heard slight reminders of the Walford Davies/George Dyson RAF March Past. Despite the enthusiastic promptings of conductor John Wilson the Epic March, although agreeable, only revealed to me its lacklustre quality.
The music of John Ireland is served extremely well by John Wilson and the Hallé who are on splendid form. These engaging and refreshing readings serve to reinforce to me how far the orchestra has come in recent years. The sound quality from Studio 7 at the BBC at Oxford Road, Manchester is a credit to the engineers. Fiona Richards's booklet notes are as authoritative as I had expected.
-- Michael Cookson, MusicWeb International
POEM OF LIFE
Price: Songs of the Oak - Orchestral Works / Jeter, Württemberg Philharmonic Reutlingen
The rediscovery of Florence Price’s music has revealed one of the most significant bodies of work by an African American composer in the 20th century. The variety of genres represented on this release place Price’s immense artistic imagination on full display. The two Concert Overtures explore her engagement with spirituals, both episodically and coloristically, in music that embraces the somber, the poignant and the ebullient. Songs of the Oak is a tour de force of Hollywood-influenced storytelling while The Oak offers amore anxious, ultimately tragic portrait. Price’s best-known work is the Suite of Dances–originally for piano it is heard here in the composer’s full, sumptuous orchestration.
REVIEW:
The rediscovery of Florence Price’s music has revealed one of the most significant bodies of work by an African American composer in the 20th century. The variety of genres represented on this release place Price’s immense artistic imagination on full display. The two Concert Overtures explore her engagement with spirituals, both episodically and coloristically, in music that embraces the somber, the poignant, and the ebullient. Songs of the Oak is a tour de force of Hollywood-influenced storytelling while The Oak offers a more anxious, ultimately tragic portrait. Price’s best-known work is the Suite of Dances — originally for piano, it is heard here in the composer’s full, sumptuous orchestration.
-- WFMT 98.7FM Chicago, IL (Lisa Flynn)
Symphony of Sounds
Karlowicz: Symphonic Poems Vol 1 / Wit, Warsaw Po
Mieczyslaw Karlowicz's six symphonic poems feature gobs of Straussian sonority in loosely organized forms, and while Antoni Wit's performances are actually a touch slower than the competition on Chandos, the playing of the Warsaw Philharmonic is so much more atmospheric, richly textured, and knowing than that of the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda that the music is transformed. In classic Romantic fashion, the programmatic basis of all of this music is darkly tragic (for example, Stanislaw and Anna have an incestuous love affair and the story naturally ends in death). Wit clearly understands the idiom and milks the music for all it's worth. Thus, the celebratory sequences in Episode at a Masquerade have an extra degree of feverish brilliance, and the repetitious opening of Lithuanian Rhapsody is spellbinding rather than merely monotonous--in short, these forces make the best possible case for Karlowicz.
This is a young man's music--he was only in his early 30s when he died in 1909--full of self-indulgent excess; but it's also brimming with promising talent. This sumptuously engineered production reminds us of just what a loss his early death represented for 20th-century Polish music, while allowing us to savor his all too meager legacy.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
Poems and Rhapsodies / Ivakhiv, Shao, Sirenko, Ukraine National Symphony Orchestra
Brahms: Symphonies 1 & 4 / Jansons, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
This disc follows close on the heels of these artists’ recording of the Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3 on BR Klassik (SACD) 900111. Both Symphonies were recorded in the splendid acoustic of the Herkulessaal and audience applause has been retained at the conclusion of each symphony. In May 2011 I experienced at first hand just how empathetic the relationship is between Jansons and the Bavarian RSO. I eagerly await the opportunity to attend one of their Munich concerts.
Brahms was aware that by writing symphonies he was encroaching on the territory ruled by Beethoven. In fact Brahms had written to Hermann Levi that he could feel the presence of Beethoven marching behind him. Many Brahms supporters, notably Eduard Hanslick, were happy to acknowledge the close relationship of the First Symphony to the music of Beethoven. Hans von Bülow went further, referring to the C minor symphony as “Beethoven’s tenth”. Brahms was 43 and at the height of his maturity when his Symphony No. 1 was completed in 1876 although the gestation period had been protracted, making sketches for the score, it seems, over twenty years earlier.
The grave and leaden thuds of the threatening drums that open the first movement Un poco sostenuto - Allegro are implacably convincing. Impressive too is the beautiful oboe playing of the rising motif at 2:16. Throughout this movement an assured Jansons successfully provides generous quantities of beauty, sadness and even menace. Compared to many rivals it took me a while to get used to his rather measured pace. One senses that he is rather holding back his forces. Although Rattle comes close with the BPO in truth no one I have heard on record has managed to provide an opening of such raw power. It approaches that of Klemperer and the Philharmonia. There is a burnished autumnal countryside feel to the E major Andante sostenuto. One could imagine walking at the edge of an eerily tranquil and shadowy forest whilst anticipating the ominous onset of severe weather. In the midst of such glorious playing I was struck how much the rising melody for solo violin at 6:05 reminded me of a section in Brahms’ Violin Concerto. Warm and magnificently lyrical melodies abound in the short Un poco allegretto e grazioso right from the swaying opening measures. Its manner is reminiscent of Mendelssohn. This is fresh music of the great outdoors and is evocative of cool early morning dew over a backdrop of wonderful Alpine scenery. Jansons conveys a sense of intense activity in the closing Adagio - Allegro non troppo ma con brio as if lying on a verdant grassy bank gazing up at the tones and shapes of a swiftly changing sky. I loved the inspiring and highly memorable chorale melody. The writing really evokes the finale to Beethoven's ‘Choral’ Symphony.
It was in 1884 and 1885 that Brahms worked on his Symphony No. 4 at the Austrian summer resort of Mürzzuschlag in the Styrian Alps. Hans von Bülow, who had conducted a rehearsal of the score enthused that the symphony was “stupendous, quite original, individual, and rock-like. Incomparable strength from start to finish.” It’s esteem has endured and remains for many Brahms’s most popular symphony. Walter Niemann found an intense degree of sadness in the fourth movement and wanted to describe the score as Brahms’s ‘Elegiac’ symphony.
A comforting mood of warm serenity and joy suffuses the swaying opening Allegro non troppo. In splendid performances such as this I am reminded of the verse, “perfectly cultivated earth. Honey of dawn, sun in bloom” from the poem Glimmer by Paul Éluard (1895-1952). Commencing with a striking horn-call in Jansons’s hands the E major Andante moderato feels like a dreamscape attaining beguiling heights of fantasy and grandeur. I love the good humour and vigour of the Scherzo as Jansons takes the music forward with majestic strides. In the dark key of E minor the final movement marked Allegro energico e passionato is a heroic drama constructed out of a theme and variations in the form of a chaconne often described as a passacaglia. Here Brahms introduces contrasts of the broadest imagination including chorale-style variations featuring horns and trombones. I especially enjoyed the lovely and moving passage for solo flute at 3:05-3:56 as well as the following woodwind interplay and the fierce and defiant hammer-blows.
Jansons and the Bavarian RSO provide highly accomplished performances even if they are unable to match the pervasive aura of heart-searching and the strong sense of excitement provided by Klemperer/Philharmonia and Rattle/BPO. The warm and well balanced sound quality from live concerts at the Herkulessaal, Munich is impressive.
It has been a ‘rite of passage’ for conductors to record a complete cycle of the Brahms symphonies and I have several splendid sets in my collection. My benchmark is the set of evergreen performances from Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia. These are aristocratic, powerful and expressive. They were recorded with the great producer Walter Legge at his favoured venue: London’s Kingsway Hall in 1956/57 and can be heard on EMI Classics 5 62742 2 (c/w ‘Haydn’ Variations; Alto Rhapsody with Christa Ludwig, mezzo-; Academic Festival and Tragic Overtures). The digitally re-mastered sound is quite superb. With impeccable credentials Klemperer is a marvellous and experienced Brahmsian who made a studio recording of the Brahms First Symphony with the Staatskapelle Berlin as early as 1928. I often play the sterling performances of the Symphonies 1-3 conducted by Eugen Jochum with the London Philharmonic Orchestra from the Kingsway Hall, London in 1956 on EMI Classics 5 69515 2. Re-mastered at the Abbey Road studios, for its age, Jochum’s sound is excellent too. For an accompanying single version of the fourth symphony I would add Carlos Kleiber’s commanding 1980 Musikverein, Vienna reading with the Vienna Philharmonic digitally recorded on Deutsche Grammophon 457 706-2. Of the modern digital sets I greatly admire the 2008 accounts from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle on EMI Classics 2672542. They were recorded live in the Philharmonie at single concert performances with some additional patching. In my review I described them as, “urgently spontaneous performances conveying a Romantic power of immense intensity.”
Jansons and his Bavarian Radio colleagues are impressive Brahmsians. Any serious collector should be happy to hold this set of Brahms’ symphonies.
-- Michael Cookson, MusicWeb International
Rahbari: My Mother Persia, Vol. 1: Symphonic Poems Nos. 1-3
Philip Sawyers: Symphony No. 4 & Hommage to Kandinsky
Symphonies & Melodie Zhao Ricercate
Devienne: Flute Concertos No 1-4 / Gallois
"[A] lovely recording of four flute concertos by François Devienne. Playing on modern instruments..., [Patrick] Gallois and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra do a marvelous job of conveying the lightness and the joyful elegance of Devienne’s very French style. The album is a sheer delight from beginning to end." – Rick Anderson, CD HotList
John Williams: Flute Concerto – Bernard Herrmann Souvenirs d
Abel: Orchestral, Concertante & Chamber Works
Strauss: Symphonic Poems / Weigle, Frankfurt Opera & Museum Orchestra
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Excerpts from select reviews of previously released volumes include in this set:
Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra & Don Quixote / Weigle
Sebastian Weigle secures a finely prepared, keenly purposeful and (above all) intensely musical account of Also sprach Zarathustra.
– Classical Ear
Strauss: Ein Heldenleben; Macbeth / Weigle
First impressions of this Heldenleben are highly favorable. Ingo de Haas is a generous, full-toned soloist in 'The Hero's Companion', but he's never cloying. Strauss performances don’t come more seamless and authoritative than this.
– MusicWeb International
Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie / Weigle
Weigle’s Alpine Symphony performance is defined by a wonderful lyrical generosity, complete control of the work’s 50-minute span, and orchestral playing in which every note seems to reflect the drama that is being played out. Highly recommended
– Gramophone
Holst: Cotswolds Symphony, Japanese Suite / Falletta, Ulster Orchestra
Gustav Holst’s youthful enthusiasm for Wagner is reflected in his ebullient Walt Whitman overture written in 1899. Shortly afterwards he composed the Cotswolds Symphony which embraces hints of contemporary British folk music but is dominated by the slow movement, a profound elegy for the utopian socialist William Morris. Though completed at college, A Winter Idyll shows real orchestral assurance. Indra is an accomplished tone poem revealing Holst’s interest in the legends of India, whilst the glittering and evocative Japanese Suite was written in response to a request from a Japanese dancer appearing in London. The Ulster Orchestra is one of Northern Ireland’s cultural cornerstones and since its foundation in 1966 has become one of the major symphony orchestras in the United Kingdom and Ireland. JoAnn Falletta was appointed Principal Conductor in May 2011, the orchestra’s twelfth but first female and first American to be appointed to the post.
REVIEW:
All of this music is early with the exception of the Japanese Suite, and all of it has appeared on CD before, most notably (with the exception of the symphony) on the superb series of Holst discs issued over the years by Lyrita with such luminaries as Adrian Boult, David Atherton, and Nicholas Braithwaite at the helm. I would never want to part with those three Lyrita discs, but I find this new Naxos disc just as satisfying, and Falletta’s generally more inward, reflective style offers new insights. That it contains a performance of Holst’s only completed orchestral symphony, which gives the work new stature, only adds to its value as an addition to a discography understandably, but regrettably, dominated by one magnificent work. While only one of these works qualifies as a mature composition in a distinctive voice, even the student-written A Winter Idyll shows its composer in a good light, and proves that while fame may have eluded him until midlife, it was not for lack of talent or skill.
A Winter Idyll, the Walt Whitman Overture, and the “Cotswolds” Symphony, all effectively apprentice works written between 1897 and 1900, owe much to the example of the great German Romantics. The influence of Mendelssohn and Schumann in particular should not be surprising given Holst’s then-recent tutelage by Stanford and Parry at the Royal College of Music. And even a casual listener to the symphony will be able to guess that Holst was then much taken with Wagner. What is notable, however, is just how effectively he has already incorporated these voices into one of his own, albeit one less individual than that of the composer of The Planets, or Egdon Heath, or even Beni Mori of but a few years hence.
The symphony has had one previous recording on Classico with Douglas Bostock conducting. It is still available on other reissue labels, but Falletta’s performance improves on the earlier effort in every way. Tighter and weightier than Bostock in the main—though the scherzo is engagingly quicksilver—she convinces one that the symphony is much more than just a frame for the moving elegy for socialist visionary William Morris that comprises the second movement. Falletta similarly finds new depth in the transitional symphonic poem Indra (1903), emphasizing atmosphere and warmth where the alternative reading by Atherton inclines more toward brilliance and contrast.
The Japanese Suite is the one work here that is representative of the mature Holst, to the extent that any work can be said to represent a composer who notoriously hated to repeat himself. It reflects his developing interests in things Asian, and in folk music, and it shows him free of the old-school German romantic model. It was written in 1915 in response to a commission from Japanese dancer Michio Ito for a London recital, and so is exactly contemporaneous with The Planets. In fact, Holst stopped work on the larger suite to write the smaller one, and many ideas found in the former are adapted to the scale and delicacy of this attractive work that has been unfairly overshadowed by its bigger and more flamboyant sibling.
Its neglect may to some degree reflect the challenge it offers the conductor. Neither Falletta nor Andrew Davis in the other currently available recording on Chandos can match the character of Boult’s recording on Lyrita. More than either, Boult and the late-’60s London Symphony Orchestra bring out, through canny pacing, phrasing, and articulation of these haunting ancient tunes, the Japanese flavor Ito sought in this work. Falletta’s performance is still wonderfully sensitive and perfectly scaled, but here I must register my one clear preference for an alternative.
That said, clearly there is some good chemistry going in Ulster between its fine orchestra and the new American principal conductor. One can only hope that there will be many more releases like this in the future, and in the superb sound provided by the Grammy-winning producer and engineer, Tim Handley and Phil Rowlands. Definitely a winner.
FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames
