Leroy Anderson, America's Iconic Light Music Composer
J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 08/14/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"In the wake of two lauded earlier volumes of Leonard Slatkin's recordings of orchestral music by Leroy Anderson comes this volume containing such favorites as 'Plink, Plank, Plunk', 'Sleigh Ride', 'The Typewriter', 'The Syncopated Clock' and 'A Trumpeter's Lullaby'. Of the three volumes this is the one with the largest number of the best-known pieces and it is, of course, self-recommending. And, as in the earlier volumes, Slatkin and the BBC Concert Orchestra, supply the music with all the light-heartedness, élan and suavity one could wish for.
Lovely as the well-known pieces are, for me the best parts of the CD are those less familiar but equally attractive pieces, the ones that many of us have never heard before. 'Serenata' is drenched in Spanish atmosphere and features two marvelous tunes. 'Mother's Whistler' (pun intended) is an early piece that Anderson withdrew but it was found in the library of the Boston Pops and saw the light again years later; it features an insouciant whistling tune in the high violins. 'The Phantom Regiment' features muted trumpets and depicts a ghostly troop of marching onto the scene and then off again. 'Sandpaper Ballet' requires the percussion section to use three grades of sandpaper to imitate the rhythms of a soft-shoe routine.
Anderson's take on 'Old MacDonald Had a Farm' is laugh-out-loud funny with its imitations of barnyard sounds. And his arrangement of Meredith Willson's 'Seventy-Six Trombones' cleverly mixes Willson's tune with some of the familiar marches of John Philip Sousa. And then Anderson wrote an endearing arrangement of 'Wintergreen for President', from George Gershwin's 'Of Thee I Sing'. Altogether more staid, but equally attractive, is the longest piece on the CD, Anderson's 'Suite of Carols for Brass Choir'.
No doubt about it, this is a CD to lift one's spirits and set one's toe tapping. Anderson is indeed an American musical treasure and his music is always welcome, particularly in such fine performances by Slatkin and his orchestra.
Heartily recommended.
Scott Morrison"
