Foxtrot

Rubinstein Collection, Vol. 45
Century Rolls
Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Symphony No. 3 / Maag, London Symphony Orchestra
Beethoven: Sonataen - Waldstein, Les Adieux, Appassionata
John Adams: Harmonielehre

ASIN: B000005IY2
Release Date: 1990-10-25

Tracks:

Foxtrot For Orchestra: The Chairman Dances
Christian Zeal And Activity
Two Fanfares For Orchestra: Tromba lontana
Two Fanfares For Orchestra: Short Ride In A Fast Machine
Common Tones In Simple Time

Customer Reviews:

Excellent, Reference CD!.......2007-05-08

This recording contains THE benchmark for all other interpretations of Short Ride in a Fast Machine. It took a good while to find this, but here it is. Brass musicians, take note, you need to own this for interpretations of this piece. The San Francisco Symphonies' playing is impeccable - tempos, dynamics, energy level are all spot on.

Maximum Minimalism.......2006-03-26

Along with Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, John Adams is one of the foremost composers of what is often called "minimalist music." To classical fans who have been weaned on everything from Handel and Bach through Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, and Aaron Copland, the very notion of minimalist music, with its repetitious rhythms, might seem a turn-off.

When, however, you get a world-class orchestra like the San Francisco Symphony and a solid conductor in Edo De Waart (who was the orchestra's music director from 1974 to 1985), who premiered many of Adams' pieces and who know them perhaps better than any orchestra around, the results are fascinating, as can be gauged in this Nonesuch recording. It consists of "The Chairman Dances" (from the composer's 1985 opera "Nixon In China"); "Christian Zeal And Activity" (with an admittedly somewhat ponderous evangelical sidebar stuck in there); "Tromba Lontana"; "Short Ride In A Fast Machine" (almost certainly this composer's most popular single piece, and for good reason too); and "Common Tones In Simple Time." As is typical for Adams in particular, and minimalist music in general, the orchestration is varied and vibrant, occasionally using glockenspiel and synthesizers. If one has heard John Williams' eerie scores to Spielberg's films ALWAYS and A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, one can tell how influential the minimalist movement has been on other composers of our time.

For those who are just getting introduced to minimalism and who may be a bit uneasy with the form, this great recording is a perfect introduction to the form. For those who are already very much into it, this is essential.

Favorite recording, favorite piece.......2003-04-30

This is THE recording to buy if you want the best John Adams Chairman Dances. Unbelievably tight playing...words just don't do it justice.

?.......2002-05-18

I think I just don't get John Adams. I like other minimalistic composers a lot. But this cd I only listened to a few times before knowint it wasn't for me. The title piece, The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra), is beautiful, repeating through a tapestry & changing minutely & deliberately with introduction or subtraction of musical lines (which consist of a couple notes & a pulsing rhythm) & brilliant manipulation. It's an exciting piece. But then. The rest of the cd just kind of plops for me. One of the pieces features a very long evangelical rant. Why did John Adams have to put that there?

Promises kept.......2002-03-27

Asked by a friend to recommend an intoduction to the music of John Adams, I recommended this rather short disc. Not only because it has such accessible works by this major talent, but also because it allows the listener unfamiliar with the minimalist terrain enough samples to stimulate further investigation. Recorded in 1987 the San Francisco Symphony under Edo de Waart sounds a bit thin, but that too is a reason to start here. Much of Adams' music is played by this orchestra and since Michael Tilson Thomas' rise to the helm there has been an extraordinary sea change. After hearing this recording, play the 1997 recording by the same orchestra (led by Adams) performing the "Harmonium" and "The Klinghoffer Choruses" and I think you'll note the difference, sonically and stylistically.. And while you're comparing you will have grown into the more major later works of Adams!

Kurt Weill: Life, Love, & Laughter--Dance Arrangements, 1927-50

Average customer rating:

SAIL ON, KURT!
Not at All Vile Weill
ELEVATOR MUSIC

Kurt Weill: Life, Love, & Laughter--Dance Arrangements, 1927-50
H.K. Gruber , and Palast Orchestra
Manufacturer: RCA
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Ein Freund ein Guter Freu
Krokodile und Andere Hausfreunde
Wochenend und Sonnenschein
Superhits Präsentiert Vom Palast Orchester
Superhits V.2

ASIN: B000055YBR
Release Date: 2001-02-12

Tracks:

Mile After Mile
Bilbao Song
Stay Well
Life, Love And Laughter
My Ship
Green-up Time
The Little Gray House
Blues Potpourri
September Song
All At Once
Le Roi d'Aquitaine (Waltz)
Foxtrot Potporri
Alabama Song
Lied Der Jenny
Speak Low
It Never Was You
What Good Would the Moon Be
Tango Ballade
Kanonen-Song

Amazon.com

Here's a disc of 19 familiar and unfamiliar Kurt Weill songs arranged for dance band and played by an expert group of specialists in Roaring Twenties band music. They're led by singer-conductor-composer H.K. Gruber, whose previous recordings include Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper. The result is a start-to-finish delight. From the first notes, you're beamed back in time to one of those sleek transatlantic passenger liners, sitting in an art deco ballroom watching elegant couples in tuxedos and ball-gowns swirl by while the band plays hits from Weill's German and Broadway triumphs. Sure, the venom is leached from the originals, but who needs agitprop when you're on a dance floor? The arrangements are by a variety of hands, hired by Weill's European and American publishers with his approval to get more mileage from his musical theater works. They're delightfully square rhythmically and formulaic in transferring Weill's music to conventional dance bands, but the music still holds up and is fun to hear in its new clothes. A special treat is the eight tracks with Max Raabe, whose light tenor and falsetto singing preserve the spirit of Weill's songs, as well as perfectly mimic the boy band singers of times gone by. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews:

SAIL ON, KURT!.......2006-04-23

I wouldn't take offence here oh, Weill purists! These reconstructions are charming and harmonically reverent to their originals, more than could be said for many versions of the Weill Songbook through the decades, including Lou Reed's friendly `adaptation' of the September Song's chord progression and melodic line!

Shoenberg and Webern expressed their disdain of Weill's music; curiously, Arnold had also disclosed a secret wish of having his own audiences walk back home "whistling his tunes", oh, don't ask why... You can certainly whistle, hum and sway your partner now, as the transatlantic's bouncy dancehall sails on just as Kurt, Lotte and the lot of them did when escaping the lethal hounds of early 30s Berlin.... the-next-little-dollar bound.

Not at All Vile Weill.......2001-08-13

The ever versatile HK Gruber has done it again digging up these gorgeous dance arrangements for Weill's music--proving, if anything, Weill's versatility. Anyone familiar with the Capriccio historical Weill recordings will be aware of the long tradition of dance bands taking Weill's music as the lead for dance music or pop music incarnations (all the way up through the more obvious appropriations familiar to Americans: Mack the Knife and September Song). Hardly MUZAK arrangements (listen to the delicate violin in track 17's "What Good Would the Moon Be" to hear what I mean), this generous helping of 19 songs offers a chance to see Weill through a delightfully different but entirely compatible lens. Max Raabe provides the ideal vocal compliment on 8 of the tracks, his tenor floating effortlessly into his head voice suggesting a "period" sound reminiscent of Bing Crosby. The import title for this disc is "Charming Weill," and that modest adjective expresses the least of its virtues.

ELEVATOR MUSIC.......2001-05-23

This is a very strange CD: why would anyone want to take the quirky rhythms and melodies of the great Kurt Weill and "tame" them into dance arrangements? Certainly one has listened to (& even perhaps admired) dance arrangements of composers from Victor Herbert to Cole Porter to Jerry Herman, but these are all, if you will, main stream composers-- men whose music sounds good in original Broadway or Hollywood arrangements and just as good (or almost as good) as played by a dance band...think "Begin The Beguine" as done by Fred Astaire on film or "Begin The Beguine" done by Jo Stafford with the Paul Weston Orchestra.

But Weill was an innovator: a man who can still be listened to experiencing the thrill of something fresh and new. One immediately thinks of his collaborations with Bertolt Brecht in Germany: "Threepenny Opera" and "The Rise & Fall Of The City of Mahagonny" or "The Seven Deadly Sins", etc. his American opera, "Street Scene" with Langston Hughes or his American musical plays: "One Touch of Venus" with Ogden Nash or "Love Life" with Alan Jay Lerner, etc. The songs on this CD all deserve great recordings from the "Alabama Song" to "September Song" but they turn into a kind of flattened elevator music instead of having fresh interpretations or even more traditional ones. What happens is that the longing in "What Good Would the Moon Be" and the romance of "Speak Low" and the raucousness of "Bilbao Song" are all much too similar and much too easy.

Tracks:

Comedy Tonight (from ''A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum'') (Jason Alexander, Michael Kubala, Joey Mckneely, Scott Wise & Company)
The Worst Pies In London (from ''Sweeney Todd'') (Angela Lansbury)
The Little Things You Do Together (from ''Company'') (Cleo Laine)
Everybody Ought To Have A Maid (from ''A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum'') (Stephen Collins, Christopher Durang, Michael Rupert)
Agony (from ''Into The Woods'') (Robert Westenberg, Chuck Wagner)
Getting Married Today (from ''Company'') (Madeline Kahn, Mark Jacoby, Jeanne Lehman, Ensemble)
I Never Do Anything Twice (from ''The Seven Percent Solution'') (Millicent Martin)
The Story Of Lucy And Jessie (from ''Follies'') (Lee Remick & Company)
Chrysanthemum Tea (from ''Pacific Overtures'') (Alvin Ing, Mako, Mark Hsu Syers, Timm Fujii, Gedde Watanabe, Patrick Kinser-Lau, Conrad Yama, Jae Woo Lee, Ernest Harada, Freda Foh Shen)
You Must Meet My Wife (from ''A Little Night Music'') (David Kernan & Millicent Martin)
It's Hot Up Here (from ''Sunday In The Park With George'') (Bernadette Peters)
The Boy From . . . (from ''The Mad Show'') (Millicent Martin)
A Little Priest (from ''Sweeney Todd'') (Angela Lansbury & Len Cariou)
Agony (Reprise) (from ''Into The Woods'') (Robert Westenberg, Chuck Wagner)
Can That Boy Foxtrot! (from ''Follies'') (Millicent Martin, Julia Mckenzie
You Gotta Have A Gimmick (from ''Gypsy'') (Debbie Shapiro, Faith Prince, Susann Fletcher)