This is a very welcome reissue of an album which originally came out on the Sine Qua Non label on both LP and cassette. It presents both 16th century and modern works for brass — all of them except possibly the Gabrieli being new to most ears. The Metropolitan Brass Quartet was an important part of the renaissance of brass chamber music; they were founded in 1977 and gave their final concert at Lincoln Center in l986. At a time when nearly all brass ensembles were quintets, the Metropolitan’s had a different sound which was modeled more on the string quartet and early choral polyphony. The ensemble’s instrumentation is two trumpets, French horn and trombone. In addition to performing early music for brass, they commissioned and/or premiered 25 new works for brass quartet by various American composers, and some of those are included in this varied program. At 50 minutes, the original LP was near capacity, and one needn’t feel shortchanged as with some transfers from short-length LPs to CDs.
The Branles of Claude Gervaise were more sophisticated versions of peasant dances. Note that the Gabrieli piece is not by Giovanni but by his nephew Andrea. Its different overlapping voices made use of the spatial qualities of venues such as Venice’s St. Mark’s Cathedral. The Hovhaness Psalm is a good choice, since the composer has a way of achieving a medieval feeling in his contemporary compositions. He observed that his purpose was to create music which is beautiful and healing. The longest work on the album is the lovely 17-minute Quartet by Simon. He was active in St. Petersburg in the late 19th century and part of the Russian Chamber Brass School along with Victor Ewald. The closing Robert Starer work employs themes from a ballet commissioned by Martha Graham based on Hieronymus Bosch paintings. The music uses dissonance, wild rhythms and strong dynamic contrasts in evoking the feeling of the paintings.
– John Sunier
