John Philip SOUSA (1854-1932)
A Sousa Celebration
Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Kristjan Järvi
rec. Royal Concert Hall, RSNO Centre, Glasgow, Scotland, 22-23 September 2016
Stereo/multichannel 5.0, reviewed in surround
CHANDOS CHSA5182
SACD [68.26]
The justly named 'American March King' is
represented on this disc by considerably more than just marches, though
seven of the above pieces are so-named.
As a composer, performer, band leader and writer, Sousa was successful
and prolific. His biographical sketch on Wikipedia makes for exhausting
reading, simply because he seems never to have stopped. Fortunately
for us he was also very good at what he did and even some of his operettas
are still performed in the USA, let alone all those marches. One can
hear why in the tuneful extracts on this disc. Chandos have given us
a wide cross-section of his output, and for that reason this SACD is
not really comparable with the many other recordings available, which
focus more tightly on just the marches. The one obvious comparison is
the now classic recording by the Eastman Wind Ensemble conducted by
Frederick Fennell , on a three-channel Mercury SACD, still available
at some expense and with some difficulty, but also as a plain stereo
CD (much more easily obtained). Comparing the handful of duplicate pieces
shows how magnificent the old Mercury still sounds and how vital those
1961 performances are. If one adopts that issue as the standard, then
Järvi and his Scottish orchestra stand up to it remarkably well in all
respects.
On Chandos many (most) of these pieces are expert arrangements, because
by-and-large Sousa scored his music for other forces than a symphony
orchestra. Since he himself arranged huge quantities of his music for
alternative instrumental groupings, this can be safely ignored; you
can treat this disc as simply a varied collection of Sousa in all his
guises. The quality is very high, indeed light music gets little better
than this. There are tunes galore, many of them familiar, and most importantly
the RSNO treat them all seriously. They are wholly on top of this genre
and Kristjan Järvi proves again that he can climb inside this sort of
thing and give it all the panache it needs (I well remember his remarkable
direction of Bernstein's Candide at the Barbican some years ago).
Chandos have provided a typically excellent recording and the notes
by American academic and Sousa specialist Patrick Warfield are well
detailed. I wish he had been given more space to write about Sousa more
generally, in addition to the music on the disc, but the Web is not
short of information.
Dave Billinge
Previous review:
Dan Morgan
Disc contents
Washington Post; March [2.51]
Sandalphon Waltzes [8.25]
The Irish Dragoon: Overture [3.25]
The Irish Dragoon: Circus Galop [1.26]
The Thunderer: March [2.22]
Humoresque on George Gershwin's Swanee [5.08]
The Invincible Eagle: March [3.20]
Nymphalin [3.12]
On the wings of lightning [2.04]
Humoresque on Kern’s Look for the Silver Lining [4.56]
Semper Fidelis: March [2.22]
The Dwellers of the Western World: Suite [12.31]
The Liberty Bell: March [3.15]
El Capitan: waltzes [3.46]
El Capitan March [2.03]
The Gliding Girl: Tango [2.48]
The Stars and Stripes Forever: March [3.20]
