Fiesta! (Herbert Owen Reed - Morton Gould - Clifton Williams)

Album review

The inner front cover of the program book of this Reference Recording CD shows one of the Dallas Wind Symphony's percussionists in the act of playing a bass drum that is probably bigger than he is. It is an apt metaphor for the sound of the disc, which is wide in dynamics and frequency response and big in impact. While orchestral composers of the post--World War II era sank into academicism and complexity at the expense of audience understanding, composers for bands continued to try to write crowd-pleasers. The five works on this disc are examples of a vogue for writing Mexican "postcards" for band. The best known of them is H. Owen Reed's La Fiesta Mexicana, a three-movement symphony quoting sources as diverse as the mariachi song La negra, Gregorian chant, and an Aztec dance tune. The most brightly scored work is Morton Gould's Santa Fé saga, wherein that utilitarian U.S. composer saluted a band conference in New Mexico's capital city, buit on its prehistoric Mexican foundations. Clifton Williams' Symphonic Dance No. 3, "Fiesta" owes its Mexican influence to its having been originally commissioned by the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, which has featured Latino music--a transcription for band was made two years later. Roger Nixon, a native Californian, reflected his state's many "Old Spanish Days" celebrations in "Fiesta del Pacifico," and the disc is rounded out by an arrangement of Frank Werle's Fandango for piano. It's an attractive and well-chosen program, though the best pieces are the first two. The sound, as we have noted, is spectacular; the disc was produced by J. Tamblyn Henderson, Jr., and recorded by the great Keith O. Johnson. The music, while very well played, lacks a measure of the needed fire.
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