Music Store: Glorious Sound of Brass CD or Cassette

Average Rating:

This CD offers a range of brass music composed in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The performance is very clean as far as intonation as well as phrasing and dynamics.

This is a remastering of a 1960's performance, although you can't tell that just by lsitening, as it is free from noise, pops, and hiss. The liner notes weren't updated since the original recording (they attribute the Trumpet Tune to Purcell and not Clark, as it has been discovered recently), but that's not much of a concern, as the recording pretty much speaks for itself.

I was very happy to find a brass recording of Providebam Dominum, but I was a little disappointed by the recording on this CD. Overall, the song is played beautifully and gracefully. However, toward the end of the song there are accented notes that I feel are unnecessarily harsh. The three or four blatted notes in this track is the only blemish on this otherwise great CD.

The rest of the tracks, however, are played very nicely and without any unusually harsh notes. The Purcell/Clark Trumpet Tunes are played especially well, and the addition of the organ for a few tracks is a nice touch.

All in all, this is a great CD, and worthy of any brass music collection. It's not as refined or stylistic as some of the Canadian Brass recordings, but it offers a great deal to the early brass music enthusiast.