Tunbridge Fair/Little Concerto for Piano and Band/Symphonic Jazz Suite/Eidesis IV for Wind Ensemble and Electronic Sounds
Paul Snook · Canadian University Music Review · 1982
PISTON: Tunbridge Fair. COWELL: LittJe Concerto for Piano and Band. BENCRISCUTTO: Symphonic Jazz Suite. LANZA: Eidesis IV for Wind EnsembJe and Electronic Sounds. McGiIl Wind Ensemble conducted by Robert Gibson. McGILL UNIVERSITY RECORDS 79008. Apparently McGiIl University of Montreal is fully and seriously committed toits new recording project: this seventh release in the series, a program by the McGiIl Wind Ensemble under Robert Gibson, adheres to the highest professional standards in both the interpretive and reproductive departments. Musicologically speaking, the disc is outstanding for the first stereo recording of Walter Piston's irrepressible band repertory piece, Tunbridge Fair, and the first recording ever of Henry Cowell's Little Concerto for Piano and Winds. Though designated an intermezzo by the composer, the Piston is really a frisky, almost pugnacious overture featuring one of his high-stepping and strutting jig-tunes which quickly sets off into a breathtakingly intricate but always clear-headed maze of rhythmic displacement and contrapuntal prodigality. Gibson's young players negotiate their way through the challenging score with the required mien of cool swagger and casual precision; in fact, Gibson seems to maintain a faster gait and sharper dynamics than Fennell on his fine old Mercury recording with theEastmanEnsemble, though thelatter had the edge in thumpingly resonant bass. Like so many of Cowell's inoffensive works, the Little Concerto promises more than it delivers, no matter how much the listener keeps wishing for it to be a better piece than it actually is. One knows from such authoritative works as the Sinfonietta, the Synchrony, the Variations for Orchestra, and some of the middle symphonies, and from the sheer abundance, imagination, and humanity of his huge catalog, that Cowell was capable of writing near-great music but, alas, only intermittently. Of course, one mustn't demand too much from a modestly titled concerto, but Cowell's facile, slapdash mixture of literalminded dissonance (i.e., the fistful.of chords and the plucking of piano strings as a kind of horizontal harp) and folksy blandness is just too simplistic to sustain much interest beyond the level of quirky amiability. The liner note speaks of Cowell's melody, whimsy and freedom-all very true, but this three-movement sequence of Step Dance-RondoHornpipe could also do with a little more substance, structure, and subtlety. After coming down so hard on Cowell, it may seem churlish, if not downright Mongolian, to say a few kind words about a piece calling itself Symphonic Jazz Suite by one Frank Bencriscutto, an American trained at Eastman and now teaching in Minnesota. …