That’s the extent of my listening notes for this new album from John Wilson and company. So do I even need to go on? (I suppose I could elaborate a bit. But I can be brief.)
In summary, there’s hardly a single distinguished characteristic to the musicmaking, nor a single distinguished characteristic to the orchestral playing. They’re just sight-reading this stuff, probably after lunch when everyone is a little sleepy and just wants to get it over with and go for happy hour. And Wilson flailing his arms around up there (as can be seen on the YouTube video of the recording session) doesn’t seem to be very motivating.
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 failed again on this one. 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 pretty much what we hear here. This is truly just about as boring a disc of orchestral lollipops as you can imagine. And Chandos ensures it with distant, indistinct sound, transferred at a very low volume level, lacking presence and impact. Wilson is detached and disinterested, without the slightest spark of involvement or characterization, and the orchestra is even more detached and disinterested, without the slightest spark of, well, anything.
Well that’s not entirely true. There are actually 2 pretty good things here. Chabrier’s Joyeuse Marche is vivacious, and the orchestra is clearly having fun with it. And the sound suddenly springs to life with good dynamics too. (All the works on this disc were recorded at different sessions.) 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 a real affinity with this little piece, and brings a musical involvement and dynamic engagement to the score which eludes him elsewhere. And Chandos provides colorful and wonderfully atmospheric sound for this, better focused than much of the rest. (If only they had invested as much musical involvement into the rest of the program.) But to put this into perspective: these make up just 11 minutes of the total 68-minute program, and can’t begin to compensate for all the rest.
Beginning with a quick, slick Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Wilson skates over the surface in his rush to get through it, with absolutely no characterization of what’s going on, or even the slightest character in the playing. Little details (especially in the woodwinds) are glossed over, and the recording, transferred at a very low volume level, lacks presence and dynamic impact. Climaxes come and go without event, so don’t expect much spectacle in the buildup to the dramatic pause there in the middle, or a sense of calamity at the end. It’s all just about as run of the mill as you can imagine it being. 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 utterly boring.
Clair de lune is played in Wilson’s own arrangement, which is completely ordinary and rather amateurish. The way he endlessly breaks up the lines mid-phrase, tossing them around back and forth from woodwinds to strings and then back again, is distracting and disruptive. 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 way in the back goes by virtually unnoticed, meaninglessly buried in the reverb. But the strings are silky, which is always lovely to hear.
Danse Macabre, which should be right up Wilson’s alley, is again affected by the low transfer level and laid-back perspective. And John Mills’ sappy violin solos don’t help matters. 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 exaggerated undulating gestures from the strings, which sound downright weird. 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 in the score. If only the final minutes had generated more verve and a real sense of menace (especially from the brass), this would have been really good.
And as for Carmen, all 35 minutes of it, I’m not even going there. Who needs or wants yet another orchestral arrangement of this music? I heard just enough of the opening Toreadors 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. Me – I’d much rather listen to a good highlights disc of the actual opera.
I really wanted to like this album. This is stuff Wilson should be good at. But ultimately, it’s Chandos which lets us down the most. I mean, we expect these freelance musicians to just read through this fluff, with perfection of orchestral execution being paramount. And that’s exactly what (most of) it sounds like. But Chandos could at least provide spectacular sound for it – especially for this kind of repertoire. But we don’t even get that. The orchestra sounds to be in the back of the hall, with indistinct details, well-behaved brass, and mild-mannered dynamics.
In the end, one cannot overlook the fact that, as noted 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 this program. But what remains unexplained is why their previous Puccini album got the powerhouse sonic blockbuster treatment, and this one got the laid-back, soft focus – just when Wilson literally needed all the help he could get.
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, enjoy it (perhaps while dusting or cooking dinner), and be happy with it. On the other hand, if you want a more engaging musical experience, take a moment to go find some of your favorite old CDs of this repertoire, sit down, and immerse yourself in the musicmaking.
