Album Reviews

A generation has grown up without Reference Recordings, which due to a series of business mishaps, had gone silent and not due to a lack of demand for its consistently spectacular recordings and often adventurous titles.

A generation may know little or nothing about the engineering brilliance of Keith O. Johnson but now with Reference back in business, it surely should and there's not a better way to discover Mr. Johnson's penchant for huge, holographic soundstages, explosive dynamics and depth-charged low frequency extension than on this recording. And this is on CD. You should hear some of the old vinyl! Older appreciators of finely recorded sound need no introduction.

Recorded summer of 2007 in Dallas's spectacular-sounding Meyerson Symphony Center, this set of fanfares, processions and general pomp and circumstance will have you yearning for a crown to be placed atop your head by the time it's over, though a little of this musical regalia goes a long way and it's not likely you'll be playing this straight through too often, though you surely will the first time, returning often to the final piece, but more about that later.

The Russell Johnson (acoustician), I.M. Pei (architect) designed Meyerson is a rich, warm-sounding space with a nearly ideal reverberation time. In fact, the hall's reverb can be tailored to the particular program, depending on how a series of large vents are positioned and how low the movable 'mothership' that hangs from the ceiling is positioned (you can see it in the CD booklet).

I was fortunate to have been invited to Dallas by some friends of the Symphony in May of 2006 for former conductor Andrew Litton's final weekend of performances and got both a tour of the hall (and taken to places not accessible to the public including the organ loft) and a chance to sit in a premium orchestra seat for the first half of a concert that included Mahler's Second Symphony. I sat adjacent to H. Ross Perot's box after intermission. Perot donated $10,000,000 toward building the hall so believe me, it was a good seat!

Ironically Meyerson Hall (named after Perot's friend and business associate Morton H. Meyerson) was built with microchip money and sounds warm and tubey, while Avery Fisher Hall in NYC was named for and build with money from a famous manufacturer of vacuum tube electronics, though Avery Fisher sounds hard and 'solid state' and Meyerson sounds warm and velvety.

Addictively warm and velvety is how this Keith Johnson recording sounds. It captures the sound of the hall in all its rich, creamy, clarified glory as well as that of the mighty, Herman W. Lay Family 1.36 million dollar, 4535 pipe C.B. Fisk Opus 100 organ. It's a whopper and if your system goes low, you'll hear and feel it!

The Dallas Wind Symphony and Mary Preston, the Dallas Sympony Orchestra's Resident Organist perform the mostly bombastic music conducted by Jerry F. Junkin, who also serves as the Wind Symphony's artistic director.

The opener, Richard Strauss's 'Festival Intrada' will have you thinking 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' for a few low organ note and horn bars before it veers off in another direction, but by then you'll already be immersed in the great hall's clarity and spaciousness and ready to sail! Especially if your system goes down low.

Johnson's sumptuous blend of winds, horns, percussion and organ and the hall's acoustics combine to produce a mesmerizing musical and sonic experience that will make you glad you ponied up for some high quality audio gear.

The program includes a gorgeous a and majestic piece by Gabrieli, the familiar Walton 'Crown Imperial' that plumbs the depths before the organ takes it all the way down, Henri Tomasi's solemn, ominous, almost militaristic 'Fanfares Liturgiques,' Percy Grainger's 'County Derry Air' (as opposed to 'county derriere' (sorry, my infantile side was showing), which is built around the familiar 'Oh, Danny Boy'), a Wagner excerpt from 'Lohengrin,' a piece by Hindemith, and what I think is the most interesting piece in the program, which is saved for last, contemporary composer Michael Daugherty's 'Niagara Falls' a ten minute musical and sonic extravaganza that starts slow, builds to a pleasing frenzy and ends with a snazzy, sexy, tubular bell saturated finale worthy of Bernard Hermann/Hitchcock collaboration and a drop off the falls by the film's villian (see http://www.michaeldaugherty.net/Bio.cfm for Daugherty's bio and credits).

The perspective is mid-hall/first balcony (regardless of where the mics were actually placed), with lots of hall sound, though in typical Keith Johnson fashion, the stage is very wide for added dramatic effect. Don't play this too loud or you'll miss the point. Besides, the dynamics are such that if you start out loud, you'll get blasted out of your seat during the truly loud passages.

A musical and sonic spectacular you're sure to enjoy especially if your system delivers the bottom end goods. In 'HDCD' but my player doesn't do 'HDCD' but if yours does it might even sound better but that's difficult to believe.