Customer Reviews

The Essential Canadian Brass

5 star:		(4)
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If you buy one Canadian Brass CD, buy this one. It contains the widest variety of musical eras and styles. Our favorite CB song, Beale Street Blues is hard to find, but on this CD. There are serious, classical selections and fun songs such as the "Tuba Tiger Rag" and "Flight of the Tuba Bee". This is Brass Quintet music at its best!

If you like the sound of brass and if your tastes run the gamut from Gabrieli to Handy, with stops hither and yon, this CD is essential to your collection. In it, the Canadian Brass demonstrate their amazing ability to play the early Baroque masters right along side the early jazz masters -- and make it seem perfectly natural! In the process, a bit of Rimsky-Korsakov, Mozart and Lord knows what gets thrown in for good measure. Plus, they play a rousing rendition of Bach's "Little Fugue in G Minor." If the music on this CD doesn't get you going, you need to immediately go to the ER at the nearest hospital!

This CD is amazing. It's a shame more people don't know about this incredible group. I'm a brass player and I just learned of these guys a few months ago. If you like classical music or brass music, this is a must own!

The Canadian Brass have been a lively and fun force in music for decades, since being brought together in Toronto 'by a gleaming vision of brass sound'. They are now world famous, having delighted and dazzled people in concerts all over the globe. One of the problems for a group such as this is the lack of repertoire readily available, so the group has become expert at arranging pieces for other instruments for their ensemble. They have also commissioned a good number of pieces of their performance.

One such commission is found on this recording, entitled 'The Well-Tampered Bach', a take-off on the Bach work 'The Well-Tempered Clavier'. This is a setting of various pieces by J.S. Bach for brass quintet and drums, worked by Luther Henderson for the ensemble's 1985 appearance in Toronto. Henderson is a frequent arranger and composer for the Canadian Brass, having also put together the 'Tuba Tiger Rag', reminiscent of the World War I era, and jazz pieces like 'Beale Street Blues'.

More traditional composers are represented in arrangement for brass, such as a more standard arrangement for Bach's Fugue in G minor, Mozart's Turkish Rondon, and pieces from Gabrieli, Vivaldi, Strauss, Rossini, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Pachelbel.

The disc has a wonderful blend of pieces classical and modern, 'proper' composition and traditional/folk inspiration, and a very lively and powerful presentation of all the music.

When I heard samples from this CD, I really wanted to get it. However, when I did and listened the full versions I did not seem to like them that much. There are several pices that I totally do not care for, a few I really like (especially, Bach's pieces), and some I got used to. Overall, I like the CD, but not as much as I though I would.