Word: canzonas
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Before a competent reading of Peter Mennin's Canzona and the concluding Ten Thousand Men of Harvard the band tackled a parvum opus of Anton Bruckner: the March in Eb, "originally for street band," as Walker announced with pain. The thing never should have been arranged for modern band, and HUB was roundly hissed for it--and hissed back, according to tradition...
...opening Canzona Noni Toni for three brass choirs of Gabrieli added insult to the injury the HRO has already meted out to us Renaissance and Baroque buffs. It is bad enough when, as frequently happens, they don't play anything at all from these periods. But to take this delightful Renaissance canzona and brutally massacre it requires real malevolence. Not only were the choirs not together, but one of the trumpets unceasingly insisted on shlurping every single high note. The HRO's next two concerts include works by Vivaldi and Bach. Let us hope they redeem themselves by handling them...
...Persichetti's Bagatelles for Band, which began the evening, is an example of this ambivalence. The four movements, while containing interesting rhythmic devices and harmonic structures, were unsatisfying as individual entities and failed to form a coherent whole. Phrases caught the ear, but no meaning or emotion was conveyed. Canzona, by Julliard director Peter Mennin, was similarly unsatisfying...
...laid it open to dull, unadventurous treatment. Gordon Jacob, for instance, may have called his 1928 piece for winds An Original Suite, but I don't know who he thought he was kidding even then. Peter Mennin likewise sticks by an outworn style of folksy nostalgia in his 1951 Canzona. Vaughan Williams' Toccata Martiale, on the other hand, succeeds because his use of national flavor is tied to a distinct personal idiom, and the ensemble fortunately rallied its coordination for the piece. It did so as well for William Bergsma's March with Trumpets, a work which at least...