Sounds of America (CD review)

Music of Barber, Copland, and Bernstein. Jon Manasse, clarinet; David Bernard, Park Avenue Chamber Symphony. Recursive Classics RC3139941.

By John J. Puccio

You probably already know that David Bernard is an award-winning conductor and that the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony includes mainly players who do other things for a living (like being hedge-fund managers, philanthropists, CEO's, UN officials, and so on). While they are not full-time musicians, their playing belies any skepticism about the quality of their work; everyone involved with the orchestra deserves praise. Nor does the word “Chamber” in the ensemble’s title indicate a particularly small group. It's about the size of a regular, full-sized symphony orchestra; yet their performances are slightly more intimate and the sound slightly more transparent than most orchestras. In the last analysis, they make beautiful music together, which is all that matters.

With the current album, Maestro Bernard and company present four pieces celebrating America by American composers. The first up is the familiar but always welcome Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber (1910-1981). It’s an arrangement for orchestra that Barber took from the second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11. Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony premiered it in 1938. The thing about the Adagio is that although that tempo marking means “slow and graceful,” there is a good deal of latitude about how a conductor actually handles it. The accompanying booklet mentions, for instance, that Toscanini got through the piece in a little over seven minutes, and that subsequent conductors have taken as long as nine or ten minutes. Maestro Bernard manages a tidy 8:35, neither too hurried nor too relaxed. It is as lovely a rendition as any I’ve heard.

Next is the familiar suite from Appalachian Spring, written in 1944 by Aaron Copland (1900-1990). Its eight movements take us through the ballet. Copland originally scored it for a small theater-pit orchestra, but the subsequent suite opens it up to a bigger, fuller, more luxuriant sound, one well suited to the Park Avenue players. Bernard does a splendid job conveying all the color of the piece, the characters, and their actions.

The third item is also by Copland, the Clarinet Concerto, written between 1947-49 on a commission from bandleader and jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman. On the present recording the soloist is Jon Manasse. Bernard leads a longingly pensive, wistfully reflective interpretation of the work, with a beautifully measured response from Manasse.

The album concludes with the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990). Inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Bernstein premiered the musical West Side Story on Broadway in 1957. The Symphonic Dances is a suite in nine movements of music derived from the show, a suite the composer prepared in 1960. Like the rest of the program, it’s familiar territory, but it’s freshened by Maestro Bernard’s enthusiastic approach. He seems genuinely engaged with the music, its story, and its people, and he brings the whole thing to life with his vigorous, animated direction.

Audio engineers Joel Watts, Brian Losch, and Jennifer Nulsen recorded the music at the DiMenna Center for the Performing Arts, New York City in November 2019. Appropriate to the music, the sound is lush and full, a trifle warm and soft, but quite natural. It displays good, lifelike detail, range, and dynamics without being in any way bright, forward, or edgy. It’s remarkably easy on the ear, rewarding both the casual listener and the discerning audiophile alike.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:

One Movement Symphonies (CD review)

Barber: First Symphony; Sibelius: Symphony No. 7; Scriabin: Le poem de l’extase. Michael Stern, Kansas City Symphony. Reference Recordings RR-149.

By John J. Puccio

Sometimes you think you know something, and you don’t. In this case, I thought I knew pretty much what a symphony was all about. Apparently, I didn’t.

“Symphony: an extended piece in three or more movements for symphony orchestra.” --American Heritage Dictionary

“Symphony: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections, often four.” --Wikipedia

“Symphony: a lengthy form of musical composition for orchestra, normally consisting of several large sections, or movements, at least one of which usually employs sonata form.” --Encyclopedia Britannica

“Symphony: a usually long and complex sonata for symphony orchestra.” --Merriam-Webster Dictionary

But as the producers of this disc, One Movement Symphonies, point out, those definitions are not necessarily true. Each of the works on the album is a one-movement orchestral piece that their composers identified as “symphonies.” Yet these are not obscure works by obscure composers. They are major symphonic pieces by composers we all know: Samuel Barber’s First Symphony; Jean Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony; and Alexander Scriabin’s Le poeme de l’extase (“The Poem of Ecstasy”). OK. We all know the music. But have we really considered them “symphonies” in any strict sense of the term? Maybe. Maybe not.

Be that as it may, it’s the “one-movement” business that holds the program together, starting with the First Symphony (1936) by American composer, conductor, pianist, and singer Samuel Barber (1910-1981). Barber subtitled it “In One Movement” just to make clear what he was up to, and sometimes people refer to it simply as the “Symphony in One Movement.” Despite the title, however, the work really is divided into four brief sections: Allegro ma non troppo, Allegro molto, Andante tranquillo, and Con moto. Barber modeled it on Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony, which is also divided into traditional movements but played without breaks.

Maestro Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony play the piece in a fairly straightforward manner, without undue flourish yet with delicate nuance. They handle the mood swings in the music with subtlety and grace, producing if not the most striking account of the piece ever recorded certainly one of the most enjoyable.

Next, speaking of Sibelius, comes the famous Symphony No. 7 in C major, written 1924 by Finnish composer and violinist Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). When Sibelius premiered it, however, he called it Fantasia sinfonica No. 1, a "symphonic fantasy." It wasn’t until the next year and its publication that he decided to label it a true “symphony.” By whatever name he wanted to call it, the work is still divided into distinct sections, in this case more than ever, with no less than ten discrete divisions from an opening Adagio to a closing Affettuoso (with “feeling” or “warmth”) and Tempo 1 (a return to the work’s initial tempo). However, the uniting thread holding it all together is not a series of contrasting keys and themes as in most traditional symphonies but a single, unifying key, C, and a series of constantly changing tempos. Again we get an honest, forthright presentation from Maestro Stern, with the orchestra sounding rich and resonant. The music remains colorful, lyrical, almost magical throughout, and the performance provides much pleasure.

The final work is Le poeme de l’extase (1905-08) by the Russian composer and pianist Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915). This work I’ve always thought of a symphonic poem rather than a true symphony mainly because it avoids the usual symphonic movements and contents itself to communicate a set of more spiritual emotions. Scriabin described it as “the joy of liberated action,” and approved the following program notes: “The stronger the pulse beat of life and the more rapid the precipitation of rhythms, the more clearly the awareness comes to the Spirit that it is consubstantial with creativity itself. When the Spirit has attained the supreme culmination of its activity and has been torn away from the embraces of teleology and relativity, when it has exhausted completely its substance and its liberated active energy, the Time of Ecstasy shall arrive.”

It’s a rather fanciful way of saying the music is sensual and provocative and should be played and enjoyed with passion. Stern’s way with it isn’t exactly in the heady realms of a Stokowski, Svetlanov, Gergiev, Muti, Abbado, or Mitropoulos, but it comes close enough. Stern appears to go for a beauty in the work beyond its mysticism, making it all the more enchanting, even beguiling for the listener.

Producer David Frost and engineer Keith O. Johnson recorded the symphonies at Helzberg Hall, Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Kansas City, Missouri in June 2016. This is a classic Reference Recordings production, meaning it sounds the way Reference Recordings discs have sounded since their founding back in 1976 and the way we’ve always loved them. The sound is dynamic, dimensional, wide ranging, and real. That last is particularly important. Reference Recordings have never tried to sound “audiophile,” just lifelike, and in the process the company has, perhaps ironically, established itself as a leader in the audiophile recording industry.

Anyway, this is all by way of saying that the current disc displays wide frequency and dynamic ranges, a solid impact, and a realistic orchestral depth and width. It comes about as close as one can get to sitting in a concert hall at a moderate distance from the ensemble. It’s quite impressive.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:

Classic HAUSER (CD review)

Music of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, and others. HAUSER, cello; London Symphony Orchestra. Sony 19075988532.

By John J. Puccio

He’s young; he’s handsome; he’s talented. He is (or was) one half of the crossover phenomenon called the 2CELLOS. Now he’s also a singles act, a gifted cellist that Sony appears to be marketing as another Mario Lanza. He is so big, in fact, that Stjepan Hauser has now outgrown his name and is just HAUSER. Yet so big that his name can only be accommodated by capital letters (like 2CELLOS), making him, I suppose, even bigger than Liberace or Cher. You can see where I’m going with this.

HAUSER’s latest release, “Classic HAUSER,” is more like a pop concert than an actual classical album. Yes, it says “Classic” in the title, but Sony is clearly going after the youth market here, no doubt mainly young women who may swoon over both the Romanticism of the music and the good looks of the artist. The disc comprises sixteen selections, the longest being around eight minutes and the majority being closer to the pop standard of four minutes or less. A booklet note tells us the final item, Barber’s Adagio for Strings, is 0:00 minutes. You can’t get much shorter than that. (Actually, it’s 7:57.)

I’ve mentioned this before, but I can’t help thinking of the first “classical” album I ever bought: a boxed LP set of the 101 Strings playing parts of famous classical pieces. But they were complete parts, like entire movements of longer works. Here, HAUSER plays brief portions of popular classical music, most of them written for other instruments and transcribed for cello.

He plays the pieces beautifully, of course, and the London Symphony Orchestra backs him with their usual grace and accomplishment. But the music is still in bits and pieces, meant to satisfy fans of the soloist who are not necessarily fans of classical music. So, I guess what I’m saying is to be aware of what you’re getting. You may be satisfied for a moment or two, but you may also long for more.

HAUSER

Here’s a rundown on the album’s contents:

  1. Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake

  2. Rachmaninoff - Second Piano Concerto

  3. Dalla - Caruso

  4. Bach - Air On a G String

  5. Tchaikovsky - The Nutcracker Suite

  6. Mozart - Concerto for Clarinet

  7. Chopin - Nocturne in C Sharp

  8. Mascagni - Intermezzo from Cavalierra Rusticana

  9. Yiruma - River Flows in You

10. Handel - Lascia Ch'io Pianga

11. Last - The Lonely Shepherd

12. Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 21

13. Borodin - Nocturne

14. Puccini - Nessun Dorma

15. Mozart - Lacrimosa

16. Barber - Adagio for Strings

HAUSER’s sound is lush and sonorous, depending on the selection. his tone golden, and his flexibility in handling all kinds of musical moments nigh perfect. I just wish he had more to work with than the golden oldies he presents here. While it’s all quite lovely, it’s all out of context, too, and all rather brief. What can we expect next? The Beatles Songbook, perhaps? And he would doubtless do it justice.

Producer Nick Patrick and engineers Neil Hutchinson and Simon Rhodes recorded the music at Henry Wood Hall, London in June 2019. The sound is befitting the nature of a pop album: It’s fairly close up, vivid in its detail, and somewhat flat in its perspective, with the soloist always well front and center. It’s also very loud, perhaps in anticipation of its being played in an automobile.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 (SACD review)

Also, Barber: Adagio for Strings. Manfred Honeck, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Reference Recordings Fresh! FR-724SACD.

Many years ago the announcer, author, and music critic Martin Bookspan wrote of the Shostakovich Fifth that it is "... a symphony more than ordinarily pretentious, brooding, mystical, sardonic and sometimes vulgar. In short, it has many of the same virtues and faults one finds in the symphonies of Mahler." I've always agreed with most of that assessment. Even though Shostakovich and Mahler lived in different eras, their approach to symphonic writing was at least similar, the many changing moods of their music probably contributing to both composers' enduring popularity.

After his music fell out of favor with the Soviet government, Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) wrote his Symphony in D minor in 1937 to ingratiate himself with the State. On the surface the piece appears to be traditional, inspirational, and patriotic; but later the composer would deny its patriotic bent, claiming it to be, in effect, satiric. Consequently, there are any number of ways to approach the score, some, like Leonard Bernstein doing it hell-bent-for-leather and others, like Manfred Honeck and his Pittsburgh Symphony, doing it in a more-restrained, orderly manner. Whether you take to Honeck's reading or not, there is no questioning he has an orchestra that responds beautifully to his every demand.

The opening movement, a Moderato-Allegro non troppo, is, as the tempo marking indicates, both gentle and reasonably vigorous. It starts slowly, lyrically, and gradually becomes faster and more agitated, but not too fast, building in momentum, and then ending in relative calm. Well, at least that's the way conductors usually approach it. Honeck, however, takes it at a more leisurely clip throughout, more quietly, building the contrasts more studiously, building the tensions and releases in broader incremental steps. There is more sadness here than anger in Honeck's view.

The second-movement Allegretto is a variation of the first theme of the preceding movement, taken at a speed just a little slower than Allegro. It serves as a scherzo, its tone satiric, mock-heroic. One can hear the influences of Mahler in this music more strongly than in most any other part of the symphony. Again, Honeck takes his time with the score's development, and I found that in his doing so he misses some of the music's more ironic elements.

The slow movement, the Largo, is the actual soul of the symphony, with long, engaging melodies predominating. It's a most-personal expression of the composer's feelings, and it's here that Honeck particularly excels, imparting to the music a heartfelt dignity, a longing, and a mournfulness that are quite affecting.

Manfred Honeck

The finale generally takes up where the first movement ended, with a clear martial or marchlike character. Whether the music is joyous and life-affirming or hectic and cynical is pretty much up to the conductor. Shostakovich seemed to want it both ways: to please the government and to please himself. Anyway, again we hear the Mahler influence (the final movement of Mahler's First Symphony comes to mind), and even though Honeck doesn't attack it with anything like the animation of a Bernstein, he stays in keeping with the rest of the presentation, and it comes off with a cautious expressiveness.

Accompanying the Shostakovich we find the little Adagio for Strings (1936), which the American composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981) prepared for string orchestra from the second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11. It may seem at first glance an odd choice for a coupling, given that the Shostakovich symphony can be so feverish and the Barber so peaceful. However, I suppose that's the point: to juxtapose the two works, both of them written at around the same time yet in contrasting places and circumstances. And no doubt Maestro Honeck wanted especially to play up the similarities between the Barber piece and the sadness of the Shostakovich symphony's Largo. The real question, though, is whether Maestro Honeck does the Adagio justice, and the answer is yes, despite Honeck's penchant for drawing out phrases longer than always necessary and over emphasizing the point.

There are any number of good recordings of the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony one can choose from, among them Maris Jansons and the Vienna Philharmonic (EMI), Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Royal Philharmonic (Decca), Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic (Sony), Maxim Shostakovich and the USSR Symphony (RCA), Leopold Stokowski and the Stadium Symphony Orchestra (Everest), Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra (Sony/RCA), Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra (Decca), Andre Previn and the London Symphony (RCA), Neeme Jarvi and the Scottish National Orchestra (Chandos), and the list goes on. Where does Honeck and his orchestra fit in? Almost anywhere in a crowded field, depending on how you like your Shostakovich played. For me personally, I prefer the energy of Bernstein and Stokowski; the sweep and grandeur of Ormandy; the authority of the composer's son, Maxim Shostakovich; and the simple directness and overall rightness of Haitink, Jansons, Ashkenazy, and Previn. Still, Honeck for his few idiosyncrasies, makes a viable alternative.

Producer Dirk Sobotka and engineer Mark Donahue (of Soundmirror, Boston) recorded the music live at Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts, Pittsburgh, PA in June (Shostakovich) and October (Barber) 2013. They made it for multichannel SACD playback, two-channel stereo SACD playback, and two-channel regular CD playback. I listened in the two-channel SACD mode.

Despite the music being recorded live, which too often results in a close-up, one-dimensional sound, this one is excellent. It's moderately distanced, with a fine sense of space and place. Dynamics are wide but not overpowering; frequency response is extended, notably at the high end; the depth of image is lifelike; and detailing is realistically defined without being bright or edgy. Thankfully, too, Reference Recordings edited out any hint of applause. It's one of the best-sounding live orchestral discs of the year.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:

Serenata: A Bouquet of Favorites for Strings (CD review)

Antonio Janigro, I Solisti di Zagreb. Vanguard Classics SVC-142.

If you laid all the albums of string music in the world end to end, some hot new group would try to rerecord all of them. No need to rerecord this collection, though. It contains some splendid music, almost every short favorite for strings you can name. The amazing thing is that Vanguard Classics recorded them so long ago, 1957 and 1962. The recordings were good in their day and they're good now, even if some listeners may not appreciate all of the interpretations.

Every performance is as lively and energetic as you'd expect from this conductor and ensemble, Antonio Janigro and I Solisti di Zagreb, and from the repertoire represented. The program starts with a zesty rendition of Albinoni's Concerto a cinque in B-flat Major, with sonics of startling presence. The Super Bit Map remastering has not only clarified the sound, it has eliminated most of the background noise between the notes. However, it has not removed all of the noise accompanying the notes, so what we get can sound slightly rough or fuzzy at times.

Antonio Janigro

The recordings themselves are a bit forward and bright, anyway, and the result is a little disconcerting at first. But one soon adjusts. The first nine tracks come from 1957 and actually sound the best of the lot; the later 1962 tracks display a fraction more static and low-end rumble.

Following Albinoni, there are Boccherini's familiar Minuet and Haydn's equally famous Serenade, requisite numbers in these kind of collections and pieces I continually mistake for one another. Janigro and his group do up both of them lovingly. The centerpiece of the album is Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik, performed with as much verve as one could want. If it doesn't come across quite as smoothly Marriner's or as effortlessly as Boskovsky's, it's close.

Also on hand are Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances Suite No. 3; Paradis's Sicilienne; Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on "Greensleeves," especially moving; Pergolesi's Concertino in G; Sibelius's Valse Triste; and, finally, a rather quick-paced version of Barber's Adagio for Strings that I had heard before from Janigro on an all-Barber anthology. This last one may be a matter of taste; Stokowski and Toscanini took it at about seven minutes; Janigro does it in six, although it doesn't sound particularly hurried, just a little too straightforward for my taste. I think, perhaps, the conductor was better in early music.

Overall, though, this is a fine collection of music, very well played. The audio, if not turned up too loudly, can sound superb as well. The collector will have most of these pieces already in his or her music library, but still a warmly recommended disc.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:

Britten and Barber: Piano Concertos (CD review)

Also, Britten: Night Piece; Barber: Nocturne for Piano. Elizabeth Joy Roe, piano; Emil Tabakov, London Symphony Orchestra. Decca 478 8189.

This recording of the Britten and Barber piano concertos makes a fine orchestral debut for American pianist Elizabeth Joy Roe. As she puts it, "This album unites my American roots with my longstanding affinity for England, as well as my fascination with the night, the idea of place, and eras past. With emotional immediacy and eloquence, each work on this album evokes milieu, mood, and memory to virtually cinematic effect, while striking resonant chords both comforting and haunting. The music of both Britten and Barber shaped my artistic development at pivotal points in my life, introducing me to illuminating new soundscapes and techniques, and inspiring me to approach my music-making with greater boldness and honesty."

It may come as something of a relief that she is doing the Britten and Barber pieces for her concerto album debut and that neither she nor Decca decided she should undertake a more massive or well known work like the Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov concertos, where competition among recordings is already pretty intense. Her style seems well suited to Britten and Barber, and she is able to display both her bravura finger work as well as her delicate, sensitive side. Not that she doesn't have some formidable competition among Britten and Barber recordings, however: She has to go head to head with Sviatoslav Richter and the composer himself in the Britten concerto (Decca) and with Barber's intended soloist, John Browning, and George Szell (Sony) in the Barber concerto. Still, Ms. Roe holds her own, and even though after hearing Ms. Roe's recording many listeners may still have clear preferences for other performers, it takes little away from Ms. Roe's interpretations.

The first thing on the program is the Piano Concerto Op. 13 by English composer, conductor, and pianist Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), written in 1938 and revised in 1945. The concerto is in four movements, the third movement originally a Recitative and Aria and later changed to an Impromptu: Andante lento. Ms. Roe plays the revised version. The composer described the piece as "simple and in direct form," dedicating it to the English composer Lennox Berkeley.

Britten may have said his work was simple and direct, but, in fact, it is also rather flashy, especially the opening movement, which exhibits a good deal of brilliant daring. It's here that Ms. Roe sounds just a tad reticent, but, again, that's in comparison to a towering performance from Richter. On its own, Roe sounds just fine, just a touch softer and more glowing than Richter and maybe a little less lively. I would chalk this up to Ms. Roe's inherent sensitivity, because she certainly captures the varying moods of the music pretty well, in particular the more poetic moments.

Ms. Roe comes into her own in the second-movement waltz, which is hardly a waltz at all, appearing more like something Mahler might have written in its slightly playful, slightly sinister, slightly ironic manner. Ms. Roe handles it beautifully, just as she does the sorrowful, moody third movement and the dramatically martial finale.

Elizabeth Joy Roe

Then, we get the Piano Concerto Op. 38 by American composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981). Barber premiered it in 1962, with John Browning as soloist. By coincidence, the Delaware Symphony asked Ms. Roe to replace Mr. Browning in subscription performances of the work in 2003 when Browning passed away. Much as I enjoyed Ms. Roe's playing in the Britten concerto, I enjoyed it even more in the Barber. She calls it "arguably the preeminent American piano concerto," and one can hardly argue the point. Roe handles it with much grace and beauty, with an ethereal touch in the slow movement that brings out all of its light, wispy, gossamer qualities. Then we get to the finale, and one can see why several prominent pianists of Barber's day refused to play it before the composer revised and simplified it. Even reworked, it has quite a lot of dazzling finger work required, which again Ms. Roe has no trouble negotiating.

For brief companion works, Ms. Roe chose Barber's Nocturne for Piano, Op. 33 and Britten's Night Piece. The album keeps getting better and better as it goes along, with these final two nocturnes quite lovely, thanks, as I say, to Ms. Roe's essential lyricism. She brings out all the Chopin and Debussy-like qualities of the music while making them highly individual, too.

I doubt that anyone who already owns the Richter or Browning recordings of the two concertos are going to be eager about buying something new unless it's significantly better, unless the person is an avid collector of everything ever recorded by the composers involved. Ms. Roe's performances are not significantly better; they are simply different--softer and lighter--and there is always room for different.

Producers Jimmy Kim and Stephan Cahen and engineer Jin Choi of Sempre la Musica recorded the album for the Decca Music Group at Cadogan Hall, London in September 2013. One thing this album's got that many of its competitors don't have is an extremely natural and dynamic sound. In the concertos the piano appears nicely integrated with the orchestra, placed just ahead of it, the rest of the instruments slightly more recessed and displaying a fine sense of depth and dimensionality. The midrange is mostly warm and comfortable, not at all bright, forward, or glassy; and the bass and treble emerge modestly extended. The whole affair sounds like a good soloist and orchestra playing in a real concert hall.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Copland: In the Beginning (CD review)

Also, Four Motets; Barber: Reincarnations and other works. Sally Bruce-Payne, mezzo-soprano; Ben Parry, Dunedin Consort. Linn Records BKD 117.

You're probably wondering what the Dunedin Consort, a Baroque choral and instrumental ensemble based in Edinburgh, Scotland, is doing singing the music of two twentieth-century American composers, Copland and Barber. Good question. The way the program notes describe the situation: "Both Copland and Barber, in their settings for unaccompanied chorus, had an instinctive feel for the human voice, a natural gift for word setting, and a pure style of writing that rarely, if ever, obscured its literary dimension." So, for a musically dedicated choral group like the Dunedin Consort, the real question is, Why not do Copland and Barber?

Anyway, we get several works on the album for unaccompanied chorus, two from Copland and a few more from Barber, things getting under way with the appropriately named In the Beginning by Aaron Copland (1900-1990). Written in 1947, it's a choral motet with soprano soloist, inspired by the first chapter of Genesis from the King James Version of the Bible. Although it is probably not among Copland's most well-known works, many critics consider it among his best. Copland wanted the piece sung in a "gentle manner," which is exactly what director Ben Parry and his Consort do. Still, it's not so gentle that it excludes any life or liveliness. This is a vibrant, rhythmic, uplifting performance that commands respect and admiration from start to finish. The Dunedin singers sound crisply articulate yet convey much feeling for the music. The soloist, Sally Bruce-Payne, sounds fresh and alert, with a beautiful vocal tone. In fact, everyone involved with this sixteen-minute production does an outstanding job, including Parry, who never rushes the music but lets it unfold naturally and comfortably.

Next, we get Reincarnations, choral compositions for mixed chorus by Samuel Barber (1910-1981), a work he completed in 1940, followed by several other Barber songs. Reincarnations comprise three "contemporary madrigals," in this case English adaptations of early Irish poetry. Then, there are musical selections adapted from the writing of other British poets, including Gerard Manley Hopkins, concluding with Barber's 1967 choral arrangement of his own very popular Adagio for Strings, set to the words of the "Agnus Dei." Under Parry and his Consort, they sound expressive and Romantic, qualities Barber would exhibit throughout his musical life.

Dunedin Consort

Lastly, we find more of Copland's compositions, Four Motets, written early in the composer's career, 1921, during his student days. Copland wouldn't allow their publication until fifty years after he wrote them, saying, "Perhaps people want to know what I was doing as a student. The style is not really yet mine." Nevertheless, they are quite lovely, joyful and pleasing, and the Dunedin Consort performs them lovingly.

Producer Ben Turner and producer-engineer Philip Hobbs recorded the music at Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh, UK in October 1999. Linn Records originally released the album in 2000 and rereleased it in 2014. Capturing the natural sound of the human voice, especially in chorus, is among the hardest things for a recording engineer to do. Often, vocals come off too bright, forward, hard, or edgy. Maybe that's OK for a pop album, where you simply want the soloist or backup singers to come across as clearly as possible, but it doesn't work as well for a classical album where listeners expect the sound to remind them of actual concert-hall experiences. Moreover, listeners are probably more aware of what human voices sound like in reality than they are of musical instruments. So if the vocal tones aren't quite right, they become glaring inconsistencies in a recording.

Happily, the folks at Linn get it mostly right. The voices, singly or in chorus, sound lifelike, smooth, rounded, yet detailed. There is not much brightness or edginess here except in a few of the loudest passages. A mild hall resonance adds to the accuracy of the presentation.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Above and Beyond (CD review)

Music for Wind Band. Gerard Schwarz, "The President's Own" United States Marine Band. Naxos 8.573121.

Even though the musical sound of a wind band may be an acquired taste, when it's presented as well as Maestro Gerard Schwarz and "The President's Own" United States Marine Band offer it here, it's kind of hard to resist. Of course, it may help when most of the composers involved wrote the music directly for a wind band, yet that doesn't interfere with our enjoyment of several famous transcriptions and arrangements we find here in the music of Creston, Copland, Schwarz, Grainger, Rands, Barber, and Offenbach.

First, a word about the artists: American conductor Gerard Schwarz most folks probably recognize as the longtime Music Director of the Seattle Symphony (1985-2011). He has earned numerous awards over the years, made over a hundred record albums, and currently works with several all-star orchestras. The U.S. Marine Band, known as "The President's Own," is the oldest military band in the country, tracing its formation back to an act of Congress in 1798. They are also one of the best wind bands in the country. Or in the world, for that matter.

Now, a word about the only drawback in the recording: the sound. Naxos chose to record the album live in concert. Not a good idea. More about that in a moment.

It's the music that matters, and whether you like wind-band presentations or not, you'd have to admit that Schwarz and company do up these numbers proud. We start with the Celebration Overture, a 1955 work written for wind band by American composer Paul Creston (1906-1985). I liked Schwarz's insistence that the piece sound both rhythmic and melodious and not just loud, as some marching bands might play it. The piece has some sweet inner beauty (the middle section particularly), which Schwarz captures nicely.

Next, it's Emblems by Aaron Copland (1900-1990), a work the American composer wrote in 1964 on commission for the College Band Directors National Association. One hears a brief quotation from the hymn "Amazing Grace" in the piece, a pleasing touch. Otherwise, it's a pretty simple, straightforward work, one that Copland said wouldn't "overstrain the technical abilities" of young musicians. It's pleasant enough music in a modern vein, and Schwarz carries it off with seemingly a minimum of effort. The band plays well for him.

After that is a piece by the conductor himself, Above and Beyond, written in 2012 especially for the Marine Band. Schwarz wanted to write something "slow and expressive," as he puts it, a real adagio for winds that he knew the Marine Band could pull off. While I personally found it a bit on the dull side, even when it gets rambunctious toward the end, there's no denying its expressive and atmospheric moods. And who can doubt that Schwarz plays his own music as well as anyone?

Then we get the longest work on the program, Frederick Fennell's edition of Australian-born composer and pianist Percy Grainger's Lincolnshire Posy, a fifteen-minute piece in six movements that the composer wrote for the American Bandmasters Association in 1937. The Grainger work is the centerpiece of the program for good reason. It's very good, indeed. Based on folk songs Grainger collected, these "musical wildflowers" as he described them are wonderfully infectious, charming, jaunty, melancholic, and tuneful by turns, and Maestro Schwarz appears to take great affection in them. His manner with the band is gentle and persuasive, making the pieces as touching as I've heard them.

Gerard Schwarz

Following the Grainger piece is Ceremonial by English composer Bernard Rands (b. 1934). It's rather dark and forbidding compared to the other music on the disc, yet it possesses a captivating, pulsating vigor that Schwarz realizes quite well. Even though I had never heard the work before, I can see how some conductors might allow its repetitions to get monotonous. Schwarz never does.

Then it's on to Medea's Dance of Vengeance and Commando March by American Samuel Barber (1910-1981). Both of Barber's works are enjoyable, particularly the first one from his ballet. You might not think music transcribed for band could be as gentle in places as this is, and Schwarz effectively plays up the dramatic aspects as well, creating more than sufficient excitement.

The program concludes fittingly with the Marines' Hymn, arranged by Donald Hunsberger and based on a tune, interestingly, by Jacques Offenbach. Here, the audience, generally reticent in their applause, finally come a little more alive, clapping along a tad more enthusiastically throughout the brief piece.

Maj. Jason K. Fettig produced and MGySgt. Karl J. Jackson engineered and edited the album, which they recorded in concert at The Music Center at Strathmore, Bethesda, Maryland in March 2012. It's in the nature of wind-band music that the sound is going to be somewhat deep and mellow, but here it's not quite so. In order to minimize audience noise, the engineers recorded it fairly close, making the winds sound clearer but drier than we usually hear them. Still, there seems a veil over the sonics, and I would have liked a dash more hall ambience; but it doesn't happen. Dynamics are fairly wide, with decent impact, while frequency extremes appear limited. Triangles and other percussion seem relatively weak and the deep bass a little disappointing.

Ah, and then there is the audience, of which one is always aware despite the close miking. Then, too, they clap in a curiously lackadaisical manner at the end of each selection but the last. Although I know a lot of home listeners enjoy live recordings and the sound of an audience around them, I find it intrusive and distracting.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Theofanidis: Rainbow Body (CD review)

Works by Theofanidis, Barber, Copland, and Higdon. Robert Spano, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Telarc CD-80596.

In 2001, when the Atlanta Symphony's then-new conductor Robert Spano took over the orchestra, he selected for this 2003 release four American works, two old and two newer. Frankly, the two newer compositions pale by comparison to the older pieces, but at least they bring a modicum of fresh, new light to an otherwise drab contemporary musical scene.

The two classics are Samuel Barber's Symphony No. 1 (all right, perhaps not an all-out classic, but a fine older work, dating from 1936), and Aaron Copland's Suite from Appalachian Spring, 1944, definitely a classic. Interestingly, it's the Copland piece that sounds the most inventive and the most inspired, and Spano imbues it with a soft, bucolic charm. If the Atlanta Symphony doesn't always sound as smooth and refined as we have more recently heard them, we might perhaps attribute the concern to Maestro Spano's having just taken the reins.

The two newer works are, first, Christopher Theofanidis's Rainbow Body, which the composer says he wrote while inspired by his listening to the music of medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen. Be that as it may, the piece is mostly moody and atmospheric, building leisurely and incrementally, he says, to the "lingering reverberations one might hear in an old cathedral." Fair enough, although on first listening it left me singularly unimpressed. Subsequent listening has proven kinder, so maybe I'm getting to used to it. Still, I wouldn't consider it a future classic in the league of the Barber and Copland pieces.

Robert Spano

The second newer work on the disc is more immediately accessible, Jennifer Higdon's Blue Cathedral. Do you see a thematic element working here with both Higdon and Theofanidis dealing with cathedrals? The Curtis Institute of Music commissioned Ms. Higdon to write the music for their seventy-fifth anniversary. Her idea was to use a cathedral as a metaphor for learning, a new beginning, a place of knowledge, a doorway to another world. Indeed, the music does convey the feeling of a large open cathedral, and in some passages it effectively paints the tone picture of a house of worship and education. I quite enjoyed the music and Spano's handling of it. Both newer pieces are brief at about twelve or thirteen minutes each, yet I doubt we'd want them any longer.

Telarc's sound is characteristically open and airy, with pretty good inner detail and a wide stereo spread. Uncharacteristically, however, the sound appears a bit underpowered in the bass and slightly hard in the upper midrange. No matter. Looking at it optimistically, the music doesn't require much bass, except for some of the more bombastic sections of the Barber symphony, and the upper midrange hardness helps clarify the definition.

Overall, I can't say the album entirely appealed to me, but the Copland and Higdon performances are worthy of repeat listening.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

The American Masters (CD review)

Music of Barber, Corigliano, and Bates. Anne Akiko Meyers, violin; Leonard Slatkin, London Symphony Orchestra. e-One Music EOM-CD-7791.

It's hard not to like anything Anne Akiko Meyers plays. She has such a gentle touch on the violin, she makes every piece of music a pleasure. And so it is with the three American works on the present album: the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 14 by Samuel Barber (1910-1981); the Lullaby for Natalie by John Corigliano (b. 1938); and the Violin Concerto by Mason Bates (b. 1977), Maestro Leonard Slatkin and the London Symphony Orchestra in accompaniment.

Corigliano in his booklet notes points out that there is a bond of friendship among the three composers on the disc: Barber was Corigliano's mentor, and Corigliano was Bates's mentor. Therefore, the music has deeper connections than one might suppose.

First up is Barber's Violin Concerto, which he wrote relatively early in his career (1939) and which subsequently became one of his most-popular works. It later even became the basis for a ballet. The music is exquisitely beautiful, at least its first two movements, with Ms. Meyers emphasizing its long, flowing lines and rhapsodic melodies.

Then comes that famous final movement that seems to have little in common with anything that went before. After the lengthy, relaxed line of the second movement fades out, the Presto finale enters on an agitated note. Barber marks it as "in moto perpetuo" (in constant or perpetual motion). Apparently, he meant it as a virtuosic piece for a young violinist who complained that the first two movements were "too easy." Well, the fact is, for Ms. Meyers the final movement sounds easy, too, she plays with such graceful dexterity. Nothing seems beyond her reach, yet even though the finale is fiery, she integrates it well with the opening movements. Yes, it's fast and furious; no, it's not so disjointed as it can sometimes appear.

Between the program's two violin concertos we find Corigliano's Lullaby for Natalie, a piece Ms. Meyer's husband asked the composer to write for Ms. Meyer's yet-unborn child. The lullaby is also exquisitely beautiful. Corigliano jokes that it put Ms. Meyers's baby to sleep so it must either have bored her or done its job as a lullaby. I doubt that anyone could play it any better than Ms. Meyers does, given its reasons for being.

Anne Akiko Meyers

The album concludes with a world-premiere recording of Mason Bates's Violin Concerto, which the composer says represents the violin as a kind of primeval, ancient animal. Huh? Well, he suggests that the sound of the solo violinist "inhabits two identities: one primal and rhythmic, the other elegant and lyrical. This hybrid musical creature is, in fact, based on a real one. The Archaeopteryx, an animal of the Upper Jurassic famously known as the first dinosaur/bird hybrid, can be heard in the sometimes frenetic, sometimes sweetly singing solo part." So, we go from the Romantically angelic music of Barber to the more-eccentric music of Bates, with Ms. Meyers making the transition so gracefully, you'd hardly know it was happening.

Anyway, the Bates music is all blocks and angles next to the smooth curves of the preceding works. The Bates is like printing compared to cursive writing. Still, despite its eruptive style, when Ms. Meyers enters she brings the music back to earth, straightening some of the corners and underscoring the otherwise latent lyricism of the rhythms. I especially enjoyed the quiet, sometimes eerie, continuously lovely mood of the second movement, "Lakebed memories." Moreover, the sweep of the bird flight in the finale also sounds quite fetching.

Incidentally, with Ms. Meyers so dominant, I almost forgot to mention the conductor and orchestra. Maybe that's because they simply do their job, never overshadowing the soloist, staying in the background for support. But support they do, wonderfully unobtrusive, providing an accompaniment that always keeps the soloist in the forefront and maintains the atmosphere of the music.

Producers Anne Akiko Meyers and Susan Napodano DelGiorno and engineer Silas Brown recorded the album at LSO St. Lukes, London in September 2013. The sound is very smooth, very luxuriant, yet with good definition, range, and impact. It has a soft, natural roundness about it that is quite flattering to most of the music. It's not exactly audiophile material, just comfortable. It's also a little close, with a minimal amount of orchestral depth, but the violin appears well positioned within the instrumental framework, and the frequency response remains well balanced.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Some Other Time (CD review)

Music of Barber, Copland, Bernstein, and Foss. Zuill Bailey, cello; Lara Downes, piano. Steinway & Sons 30025.

What more could you ask for than a collaboration between preeminent cellist Zuill Bailey and innovative pianist Lara Downes? I've admired their work separately for several years already, and now they've produced an album together.

For the present album of tunes by Barber, Copland, Bernstein, and Foss, Mr. Bailey plays a 1693 Mateo Goffriller cello and Ms. Downes a Steinway Model D, so not only do we get a couple of the finest musicians in the world playing the music, they do it on a couple of the finest musical instruments possible. Kind of a two-for-one deal, which isn't even counting the superb quality of the music itself. And just to make myself clear, the music, the performances, and the sound are extraordinary.

In a booklet note, Ms. Downes says "The transcriptions and concert pieces collected here are all big, beautiful examples of nostalgic American music. But this is timeless music, too, its romanticism, spirit of adventure, playfulness and purity tap into our collective memory, our underlying, ongoing, deeply American nostalgia for what we all know simply as some other time." The nostalgia is for the four American composers represented on the program and for a "golden" time in American culture when concert music held a more-important place than it does today. As such, the music is romantic, adventurous, sweet, and utterly delightful, presented lovingly by the two star performers.

The first three items come to us from the pen of composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein: "Dream With Me" from the 1950 Broadway production of Peter Pan; "Some Other Time" from the 1944 musical On the Town; and "In Our Time," an unused song only recently published. All three are lushly nostalgic and appropriately sentimental. And they're exquisitely beautiful, with Bailey and Downes providing just the right amount of wistfulness and melancholy without the music becoming maudlin or melodramatic.

Next up we find Samuel Barber's Sonata for Cello and Piano, written in 1932. There's a haunting beauty about the piece, poignant at first and then becoming ever more lighthearted before settling back into a somewhat heavier concluding mood. After that, Bailey and Downes give us their take on one of Barber's most-popular songs, "Sure on This Shining Night," the performance giving us a delightfully lyrical dialogue between voice (cello) and piano.

Following those numbers, we have a couple of works by Lucas Foss, the first, "For Lenny," is a 1988 tribute to Bernstein, borrowing the style of his West Side Story and given a charming interpretation by Bailey and Downes. Then there's Foss's Capriccio for Cello and Piano, a sort of tribute to the music of Aaron Copland, borrowing its style from things like Rodeo and Billy the Kid. Bailey and Downes provide it with plenty of good-natured spunk and vigor.

Three more Bernstein numbers follow: "For Lucas Foss" (a lot of crossbreeding here); the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, the composer's first published piece; and "For Aaron Copland."

The performers conclude the album with two selections from that most "American" of American composers, Aaron Copland: "Simple Gifts," the Shaker tune Copland used in his 1944 ballet Appalachian Spring; and the traditional ballad "Long Time Ago" from Old American Songs. With them Bailey and Downes provide a pleasingly evocative and highly satisfying ending to the proceedings.

Producer Daniel Merceruio and engineer Daniel Shores recorded the music at Sono Luminus Studios, Boyce, Virginia in September 2013. The sound is gorgeous, the cello richly expressive, the piano every bit as impressive. The two musicians sit with the cello on the left, piano slightly to the right, with both instruments showing up clearly and brilliantly. Moreover, they sound so realistic, you'd think they were live in the room with you. It's all as perfect as the music itself.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Barber: Violin Concerto (CD review)

Also, Korngold: Violin Concerto; Waxman: Carmen Fantasy; Williams: Theme from Schindler's List. Alexander Gilman, violin; Perry So, The Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra. OehmsClassics OC 799.

So, what are the connections among Barber, Korngold, Waxman, and Williams? There are always connections, right? Well, in this case, they are all twentieth-century composers, of course.  And they are all essentially Romanticists after their time. But, more important, they all either wrote at one point or another directly for Hollywood or allowed Hollywood to use their music in films. On the present album, we get a chance to hear mostly music they wrote for the concert hall, with the John Williams piece most obviously written for a movie.

The primary performers on the disc are a young pair of musicians (both coincidentally born in 1982) with enormous talent and potential, who provide the music with a Romantic spirit and youthful vitality. German violinist Alexander Gilman has performed and won competitions throughout the world and is also currently an assistant at the University of Music in Zurich. Chinese conductor Perry So has also performed worldwide, won awards, and is currently the Associate Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic. With the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, the participants do the music proud.

The program begins with the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 14, by the American composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981). Of the composers on the album, it is only Barber who did not write directly for the movies, yet filmmakers used his Adagio for Strings in motion pictures like Platoon, Lorenzo's Oil, The Elephant Man, and probably others. Anyway, Gilman's violin floats above the orchestra, the tone heartfelt and sweet. It's surprising that two performers as young as Gilman and So would produce such a relaxed and moving an interpretation; I mean, you might have expected them maybe to have hurried things along with quick tempos, quirky phrasing variations, and extreme dynamic contrasts. It's good to see they resisted the temptations and present the music in a most-touching manner, intimate and soaring.

Next, we find the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major, Op. 35, by the Austro-Hungarian composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957). Folks possibly know Korngold best for his swashbuckling music for Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and the like, but he wrote a considerable number of non-movie pieces as well. As we might expect of a composer accomplished in film scores, Korngold's work is rhapsodic and filled with references to his own movie music.  Its melodic richness could well underscore any Hollywood romance of the day. Again, Gilman and So treat the piece with reverence, soberness, and almost old-fashioned sentiment. It's exactly what the music needs, and the second-movement Andante is meltingly beautiful. Then, as Barber did in his concerto, Korngold ends his work in a rather rambunctious style, with Gilman and So letting their hair down, so to speak.

After that, we get The Carmen Fantasie for Violin and Orchestra by the German-American composer Franz Waxman (1906-1967). As you can guess, he based the piece on themes from Bizet's opera, so it gives the performers a chance at further exhibiting some bravura playing. Originally, Waxman had written the Fantasie for the movie Humoresque (1946) and later adapted it for the concert stage.

Finally, we hear the theme from the movie Schindler's List by American composer John Williams (b. 1932). The music is brief and appropriately serious. It also allows the orchestra a bigger role in the music making and provides opportunities for both Gilman and So to shine.

OehmsClassics recorded the program in 2010 in Cape Town, South Africa, to good, atmospheric effect. The sound is big and warm, the violin comparatively close, the orchestra placed effortlessly behind it in a wide array. There is a pleasing sense of ambient bloom on the instruments, which also tends very slightly to veil the presentation's overall transparency. Nevertheless, the rich, resonant sonics go a long way toward conveying the Romantic mood of the music, and it doesn't really affect the tone of the violin, which remains quite clear and natural throughout the proceedings. Add in a resplendent bass, solid impact, and a reasonably good depth of field, and you get a sonic presentation that's easy to like.

JJP

Barber: Adagio for Strings (CD review)

Also, Violin Concerto; orchestral and chamber works. Elmar Oliveira, violin; Leonard Slatkin, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. EMI 7243 5 86561 2 (2-disc set).

I mean no disrespect to a fine conductor, but I have not always found Maestro Leonard Slatkin's musical interpretations to be in the uppermost ranks of great performances. Perhaps this is unfair, given that the competition among truly great conductors is so easily accessible on disc. But in the orchestral works of American composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981), Slatkin comes into his own, and there probably isn't another conductor, short of Leonard Bernstein, who illuminates the composer's music so felicitously.

This two-disc set presents a well-rounded view of Barber's output from youth to old age. Among my favorites are, of course, the famous Adagio for Strings as well as the three Essays for Orchestra. The Adagio goes without saying, and Slatkin's slow, measured, and totally affectionate reading of it is one of the best on record.

The Essays date from the 1930s, 1940s, and the late 1970s, thus reflecting three phases in the composer's life. Actually, the contrasts are not as striking as the similarities; all three are lightweight but delightful. Well, OK, most of Barber is lightweight, but that's beside the point. The Violin Concerto is especially light, but it too is given over at times to some lovely melodies.

While Slatkin and his St. Louis players handle the orchestral duties, on disc two we find a number of smaller solo, duet, and quintet pieces (concluding with Slatkin again and the Third Essay for Orchestra). I didn't care much for the Cello Sonata, but in Excursions, Nocturne, Summer Music, and Souvenirs, we find delectable Impressionistic echoes of Debussy, Delius, and Satie. The music doesn't always go anywhere in particular, but like a pleasure ride in the country, the trip itself is worth one's time.

EMI recorded the purely orchestral sections in the mid to late Eighties, and they recorded smaller works in the mid Nineties, all in digital. I can't say any of it is the best sound I've ever heard, but it surely fits the relaxed mood of most of the music. I had about a half a dozen recordings of the Adagio on hand for comparison, almost all of them sounding clearer, sharper, and more detailed than Slatkin's account. Yet despite the softer, warmer acoustics of the EMI recording, the Adagio and the other pieces with the St. Louis Orchestra sounded just right to me. A deep bass and some clean midrange and highs are quite radiant as they beam through the mid-bass fog. The solo pieces tend to come off best, but, as I say, there is nothing seriously wrong with any of the sonics. The set offers the listener a pleasant, useful, and inexpensive way to get acquainted with an American original.

JJP

Barber: Adagio for Strings; Ives: Symphony No. 3, etc. (CD review)

Neville Marriner, The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Decca Originals 475 8237.

It's surprising, isn't it, how sometimes the simplist tune can become a hit, then a classic? Take Samuel Barber's little Adagio for Strings, for instance. It started life as the slow movement of his String Quintet, and in the late 1930s he arranged it for string orchestra. It became an instant success, and it has been popular ever since; yet it is really nothing more than a single brief passage repeated several times in several different ways.

The Adagio has never sounded more beautiful than under the direction of Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, back in the days (1976) when they were still hyphenating their name and doing their recordings for Argo. This Decca Originals brings together the Academy's acclaimed album of short, twentieth-century American works, which also includes Charles Ives's Third Symphony, Aaron Copland's Quiet City, Henry Cowell's Hymn and Fuguing tune No. 10, and Paul Creston's A Rumour. Marriner and the Academy play them straightforwardly, incisively, without a hint of sentimentality or undue exaggeration.

The Decca engineers remastered the collection in 96kHz/24-bit sound, which brings out all the detail and warmth of the music and the music making. There is a very slight edge to the upper midrange, common to many Decca recordings of the day, but it is quite faint and should not present an issue for most listeners.

JJP