If you know just one thing
about Ferde Grofé, it’s almost certainly the fact that he
orchestrated George Gerswhin’s
Rhapsody in Blue; by
the time that Gershwin came to write his less successful
Second
Rhapsody, he was able to do the job himself. If you
know one more thing about Grofé, it’s probably that he composed
the
Grand Canyon Suite.
The
Grand Canyon is
certainly likely to be the main attraction of this CD. It
may be banal, but it’s also very colourful – almost Technicolor-ful. The
two, in fact, go hand in hand, as in
On the Trail (track
3) where the imitation of the bucking bronco is colourful
and amusing at first but, at over seven minutes, rather out-stays
its welcome.
The opening movement,
depicting sunrise, is much more subtle – it’s almost worthy
of comparison with Ravel’s
Daphnis and Chloë – and
the second movement,
Painted Desert, is also attractive. If
you like Respighi at his quietly evocative best, you’ll like
these two opening movements, and probably also
Sunset (track
4). These three movements are reminiscent of the old-fashioned
travelogue film at its best.
Unfortunately, Grofé,
like Respighi, also has his more blatant moments. The closing
section,
Cloudburst, beginning softly and working
up through a predictable
crescendo, certainly would
win no prizes for subtlety, though it matches Respighi’s
more colourful moments (tr.5). EMI clearly – and probably
rightly – regard the
Cloudburst movement as the major
appeal, so they offer it twice: more about that second version
later.
If you’re going to bring
out the whole range of colour in Grofé’s music, you need
a recording that does it full justice. EMI have dug deep
into the archives of their US Capitol associates for Slatkin
senior’s 1956 recordings of the first two suites. They still
sound quite well in their 1997 digital re-mastering, but
they have been transferred at rather too high a volume. They
benefit from a volume cut of 3 or 4 dB, and they still sound
rather shrill at times, even on my Arcam/Monitor setup which
usually mellows strident recordings.
This Slatkin version of
Cloudburst is
effective enough, but if you want all the Technicolor effects,
you’d be better served by the mid-price Telarc recording
(CD80086, Cincinnati Pops/Kunzel) with ‘real’ thunder effects
or the SACD re-mastering of the classic Bernstein recording
(SS89033 – but apparently currently available in the UK only
in CD format on SMK63086).
Tim Perry recently gave
a strong recommendation to the Eloquence reissue of Antal
Doráti’s performance (442 9496). It’s less expensive than
the EMI, is coupled with an equally recommendable version
of the
Mississippi Suite (derived from a Mercury recording
with the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra/Howard Hanson) and the
Gershwin/Bennett
Porgy and Bess Symphonic Picture,
and is ‘stunningly well recorded’ – see
review.
The
Mississippi Suite looks
like an attempt to repeat the successful formula but, in
fact, it predates
Grand Canyon. In any event, it’s
attractive enough music but it lacks the appeal of the better-known
work.
Mardi Gras (tr.9), the most appealing movement,
comes close to sounding like a blend of Gershwin and Copland
in places. Otherwise, only
Huckleberry Finn (tr.7)
really captures the attention. If you want to hear music
which truly evokes a great river, try Duke Ellington’s
The
River (Chandos CHAN9154, Detroit SO/Neeme Järvi, coupled
with William Grant Still’s equally fascinating Symphony No.1 – or
CHAN9909, where the same performance is coupled with
Solitude and
Harlem and
William Levi Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony).
The
Death Valley Suite really
was an attempt to recapture the spirit of the
Grand Canyon but
it doesn’t have the appeal of the earlier work. The braying
donkey joke wore a little thin in the
Grand Canyon Suite – here,
its (mercifully brief) repetition on tr.11 (
49er Emigrant
Train) is thinner still. No doubt the music would make
a good accompaniment to a film about the 49ers, whose experiences
of 100 years earlier it celebrated. (On second thoughts,
that’s a little unfair – the pictures are actually inherent
in the music itself.) It’s hardly likely ever to receive
a more authoritative performance than the one given here
by Grofé himself, but the 1954 mono sound is much thinner
and drier than the stereo recording of two years later on
the earlier part of the CD. The sonic transition from track
9 to track 10 is very noticeable. The EMI is tolerable but
the more recent Naxos recording of this work is more attractive
sound-wise and Rob Barnett also found the performances full
of glee and zest (8.559017 – see
review).
It was a nice touch to
end with Grofé’s own more frenetic performance of the final,
Cloudburst,
section of Grand Canyon, especially as the music benefits
from shaving half a minute off Slatkin’s time, but here the
limitations of the recording in this 3-D music are even more
noticeable.
The notes, as usual with
this series, are brief but informative and the whole presentation
is attractive, with stunning photos of the Grand Canyon.
I had high expectations
of this CD; in the event, those expectations were only half
met. Stay with TP’s recommendation of Doráti if you want
an inexpensive version of the
Grand Canyon Suite.
Brian Wilson
Hollywood
Bowl Symphony Orchestra/Felix Slatkin 
