Richard Pennycuick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>There is also a Naxos Gottschalk CD (8.559036) containing A Night in the
>Tropics, the Grand Tarantelle and orchestrations of some of the piano
>pieces.  A single hearing of this was enough for me.  I thought the
>orchestrations in particular were misguided - this is one of Naxos's
>turkeys.

A bit harsh; but this recording is definitely a disappointment.  Like
Starr's voluminously researched but utterly soulless biography of the
composer, these new reconstructions of Gottschalk's lost orchestral scores
from their piano versions have been stripped of all their transcendental
vulgarity; & as a result, have gone from being outrageously willful
statements of intent with clear preechoes of Ives to vaguely interesting
classicism of the USAmerican Rollo school...  give me Hershy Kay - an
superb arranger Starr slanders idiotically in Bamboula!, as it happens -
Maurice Abravnel & the mighty Gene List over these well intentioned hacks
any day.

The terror of vulgarity which cripples this recording is rather familiar
to me - the multiple reconstructions (each blander than the one before)
of the PRChinese classic The Yellow River piano concerto (YIN, et al; after
XIAN) have almost become entertaining in their monotony - & demonstrates once
again the folly of trying to reconstruct art according to false principles:
crass, popularist & loud, this Creole original - as indeed did XIAN; & the
original team of piano concerto arrangers - achieved a sublime kind of
greatness THROUGH the vulgarity of his musical vision...  strip him of that
vulgarity & all you have is an ok melodist, who apparently wanted to be
Mozart but lacked the contrapuntal skills.

Very unfortunate.

All the best,
Robert Clements <[log in to unmask]>