Expert sightreading. But there has to be more.

​“God it's just so boring."

That was my conclusion after listening to John Wilson and company sightread their way through the majority of this program of light pops fare. Beginning with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice - which is quick, slick, and superficial. I had such high hopes for this! But Wilson skates over the surface in his rush to get through it, with little characterization of what’s going on, or even the slightest character in the playing. They’re just sight-reading this, and Wilson aimlessly flailing his arms around up there (as can be seen on the YouTube video of the recording session) doesn't seem very productive.

And then there’s the sound. Remember last time I wrote about Chandos and how they can’t manage to produce consistently good sound for this orchestra? Well, they’ve let us down again on this one. Chandos has recorded the orchestra at a distance, somewhat indistinct, and then made matters worse by transferring it to disc at a very low level. Even with the volume turned way up, the orchestra curiously lacks the impact and "you are there" immediacy of the best recordings. And just as we’ve witnessed before, when Chandos doesn’t knock it out of the park with great sound, Wilson falls flat as a pancake. And that’s exactly what happens here. As is so often the case, Wilson sounds detached and disinterested, without the slightest spark of involvement or characterization; and the orchestra even more so, just managing to get in all the notes at this speed. So many little details are lost in the rush* - and climaxes come and go without event. So don’t expect much spectacle in the buildup to the pause there in the middle (where Wilson exasperatingly keeps holding them back), or a sense of calamity at the end. It’s all just as routine as sightreading gets. Though I suppose if you want your sorcerer fast and over with in a jiffy, you might like this. But if you want something spellbinding, or a bit magical, you'll be left just as I was - thinking it's just so boring. 
 
Next, Clair de lune is played in Wilson’s own arrangement, which is pleasant enough but nothing special. It’s actually a bit amateurish in the way he constantly breaks up the lines mid-phrase, tossing them around back and forth from woodwinds to strings and then back again - which I found distracting. How I longed for just one phrase to unfold naturally. And all the left-hand filigree and arpeggiated figures of the piano original go completely unrealized, disregarded as unimportant, relegated to the poor harp, whose faint tinkling somewhere in the back goes virtually unnoticed. But the violins are smooth and silky, which is lovely to hear.

The program picks up nicely with Chabrier’s vivacious Joyeuse Marche. The orchestra is clearly having fun with it (especially the rambunctious horns!) and displays real character in their playing. The dynamic range is better too - though the sound still recesses and loses immediacy in soft passages. But much to my surprise, it's Ravel’s Une Barque sur l’ocean (not one of my favorite Ravel orchestrations) which is unquestionably the most musically rewarding item on the program. Wilson has recorded a lot of Ravel over the years, some of it good, some of it not, but he finds real affinity with this little piece, displaying a musical involvement and dynamic engagement missing elsewhere. And Chandos provides wonderfully atmospheric sound for this, better focused and more present than some of the rest. (All the works on this disc were recorded at different sessions.)
 
But then, Danse Macabre, which should be right up Wilson’s alley, is again adversely affected by the low transfer level and distant perspective. And surprisingly, John Mills’ sappy violin solos don’t help. He plays with a voluptuousness more suited to Rachmaninoff than this - though Saint-Saens indicates it to be played largamento, so I'll give him that. And a little later, there are a couple of passages where we hear some weird undulating gestures from the strings which caught my attention. Consulting the score, I was surprised to find some justification for it, so hats off to Wilson for doing something special with those peculiar markings I hadn't noticed before. The final minutes generate plenty of adrenaline and sense of menace - with the splendid horn section leading the way. If only the recorded sound had been more open and dynamic, this would have been even better.
 
As for Carmen, which closes the program, all 35 minutes of it, I’m not even going there. I mean, who needs or wants yet another orchestral arrangement of this? I heard just enough of the opening Toreadors (which comes thundering in after the ghostly ending of Macabre has faded away) to hear Wilson take off at breakneck speed with all the finesse of a runaway freight train. And the recording is a bit more potent as well. And...I just couldn’t bring myself to listen to it. It takes up over half the total playing time of this program, so if you're hankering for a rip-roarin' Carmen suite, then this disc is definitely for you. I personally would much rather listen to a good highlights disc of the actual opera instead. But that’s just me.

All in all, this release is something of a mixed bag - from the sound to the musicmaking. One cannot overlook the fact that, as mentioned above, each of these pieces was recorded at different sessions (from 2023-2025), presumably when something quick and easy was needed to finish off a recording session when there were a few extra minutes left. And here we have them all gathered together for this album. The sessions utilized two different producers and two different “leaders” (concertmasters); and, this being a pickup/session ensemble, likely different players comprising the orchestra itself. The sound engineer (Ralph Couzens) was the one constant in all the sessions. And that explains a lot about what we hear throughout the program. 
 
And it's a shame, really; I really wanted to like this album. This is stuff Wilson should be good at. Or more accurately, this is stuff Couzens should be good at. But it is the sound which lets us down the most - just when Wilson literally needed all the help he could get. I mean, we expect these freelance musicians to just read through this fluff without much involvement. And that’s exactly what it sounds like. But Chandos could at least provide spectacular sound for it, especially given the repertoire. But we don’t even get that.  

I won’t belabor the point. If you just love your John Wilson no matter what, you probably won’t read much of this review anyway. So I’ll just leave it at this…if you absolutely must have John Wilson’s latest release, then by all means get it, turn it way up (it needs it), and enjoy it - perhaps while dusting or cooking dinner.  

*For instance, where are the clarinets in their syncopated "offbeats" at Fig. 15? And the cellos at Fig. 35 - and again later just after Fig. 47? And the whirling woodwinds at the penultimate climax at Fig. 52, lost in the flurry? (These are just a few examples I noted.)