Sep 28, 2010

Autumn in the Park (CD review)

Various classical and jazz selections by various artists. EMI 50999 9 09305 2 2.

Every record company has its collections discs. Sometimes they're "Best of" albums, sometimes they're selections by a single composer or artist, and sometimes, as here, they're theme programs. You can't fault companies for wanting to market their product in every possible manner; it's their job to sell us stuff. The music they choose to fit the themes occasionally challenges the imagination, however.

Take the case of this new EMI album, Autumn in the Park. Obviously, the theme is autumn, but what exactly is the music of autumn? The jacket blurb talks of music recalling "pumpkins, homemade pies, raking leaves, crackling fires and steamy hot cider," a season of "magic, joy and love." As the folks at EMI say, they intended this album to "transport you to a relaxed state and let you enjoy Autumn in the Park."  Fair enough, whatever it means.

Things begin with the opening movement, Moderato, from Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2, played by Leif Ove Andsnes, piano, with Antonio Pappano and the Berlin Philharmonic. The particular selection seems a stretch to fit into autumn, but the music remains pleasant. It's just that there isn't enough of it without the following two movements.

Next is "The Lark Ascending" by Ralph Vaughan Williams, played by Hugh Bean, violin, with Sir Adrian Boult and the New Philharmonia Orchestra. The piece has never received a better treatment than this, and it is clearly the best thing on the entire disc, the violin taking flight as gracefully as the bird of the title as it soars upward on the currents.

Joseph Canteloube's "Bailero" from Chants de Auvergne is a terrific follow-up to the "Lark" not because it has much to do with autumn but because soprano Lesley Garrett's voice floats above the London Session Orchestra in the same way the lark gently drifts through the heavens.

At least there's no mistaking the obvious connection between the album's theme and Vivaldi's "Autumn" from The Four Seasons. Sarah Chang, violin, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra take us through the paces, although I am not overly keen on the mechanics of the presentation or the close-up sound.

After that we get the first of three jazz pieces on the program, this time "One for My Baby" by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, performed by the Bill Carlap Trio. They do a fine job, even if they don't erase memories of Sinatra's famous version.

Two piano solos follow, Felix Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words: No. 1 with Daniel Adni, and Franz Schubert's Impromptu No. 3 with Aldo Ciccolini. Along with "The Lark Ascending," they are the most beautiful works on the disc.

Gareth Morris on flute, with support by Sir David Willcocks and the New Philharmonia handle Gabriel Faure's Pavane with delicacy; and then Chet Baker and company perform Joe Young and Bernice Petkere's "Lullaby of the Leaves." Both works convey that "relaxed state" EMI mentions, although I'm not sure if it reminds one of autumn or leaves despite the title of the latter piece.

Claude Debussy's "Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum" from Children's Corner, with Jean-Bernard Pommier, piano, actually comes closer to suggesting the rustling and swirling of autumn leaves than anything before it.

The program ends with Rachmaninov again, this time his Vocalise, adapted for cello and orchestra and performed by Han-Na Chang, with help from Leonard Slatkin and the Philharmonia Orchestra, an appropriate penultimate piece; and the Johnny Mercer/Joseph Kosma/Jacques Prevert song "Autumn Leaves" by Stan Getz and others. 'Nuff said.

EMI England, EMI France, and Blue Note recorded the selections between 1967-2007. Thanks to the miracles of modern disc mastering, the engineers get them all to sound pretty much alike: a little soft, veiled, misty, casual, easygoing, always soothing, and ready to comfort.

If you like your music in bits and pieces, presented in sections lasting from two to ten minutes each, you might find this disc of value. I had mixed feelings. I loved every work on the disc, but I longed afterward to hear more complete selections or more similar items by the same composers. This album doesn't seem to me the kind of thing one just sits down and listens to but rather plays as a sort of background music. I don't much care for background music.

JJP
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Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For nearly 30 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2024 Honda CRV Sport L Hybrid, I stream music from my phone through its adequate but hardly outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through a Roku Streambar Pro system (soundbar plus four surround speakers and a 10" sealed subwoofer) that has surprisingly nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence and reasonable price. Finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker and a pair of Google Pro Earbuds for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technologies that enable us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

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"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa