Philadelphia's
Piffaro is a
renaissance wind band, but that doesn't mean it wants to be limited only to
renaissance music. In January 2008,
Piffaro rolled out a new work by Philadelphia-based composer
Kile Smith entitled Vespers, where it is joined by the chorus
the Crossing, which hails from Chicago.
The Crossing makes it a mandate not to perform any music that is more than 15 years old, and it needs not worry with Navona Records' Piffaro -- Vespers as it makes its bow only a little after a year after the work's debut, about as new as a large-scale
classical work can be on first release. The disc, nevertheless, does not show any signs of hasty preparation, and it is beautifully, if a little distantly recorded; one may want to turn it up, or not, depending on the mood. The gentle, diatonic sound of
Smith's Vespers well suits it for listening at ambient levels. If one had to pull a comparison out of the hat to describe the style of
Smith's music the basic flavor of it will appeal to anyone who enjoys
Randall Thompson's Alleluia, though there are hints of
Stravinsky and
Smith himself greatly appreciates the music of Russian choral composers such as
Alexander Grechaninov. All of these influences and more work their way into
Smith's music, but one never feels it is the sum of influences that make it attractive.
Interestingly, although
Piffaro's name is above the title, of the three major elements it is the least heard from; really it's the chorus that's most often heard from. The passages written for
Piffaro alone, however, certainly validate the faith they place in
Smith; his thinking out of the centuries-old box in regard to
renaissance instruments leads to some novel combinations of texture quite different from the deconstructionist ideal employed by modernists such as
Mauricio Kagel in terms of writing new music for very old instruments.
Piffaro's Vespers is an appealing listen;
Smith's music is colorful and ingratiating, and the performance of both
Piffaro and
the Crossing is of front-rank caliber. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis , Rovi
