The Classic Ocarina:
Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, Verdi, Sullivan and Others
The Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet; Michael Copley,
director.
Dorian DOR-93260 CD
| Musical Performance |
   |
| Recording Quality |
|
| Overall Enjoyment |
|
 This disc is funny, but it's no joke -- like all the best musical
humor, it’s based on solid musicianship. What makes it amusing is the concept of such
a humble instrument being elevated to such lofty heights.
The ocarina, according to The New Grove Dictionary of
Music & Musicians, is "an instrument in the shape of a large elongated egg,
hollow, and usually made of terracotta. In its side is formed a flattened tube with a hole
at its base; blowing down the tube, and so across this hole, sets the mass of air in the
instrument in vibration and sounds a note. The ocarina is interesting scientifically
because the sizes of the uncovered holes, their number, and the total internal volume of
the instrument alone determine the rate of vibration of the note sounded." There is
no mention of the ocarina’s role in classical music, its rich legacy, or the vast
repertoire of sonatas and concertos composed for the instrument.
That's because there ain't none. As Michael Copley muses in
his hilarious liner notes, although the ocarina has been around a long time, it has been
ignored by composers, both great and otherwise, for almost as long. Aficionados of the
Jew’s harp have their six concertos by Albrechtsberger, which also include a part for
the seriously defunct mandora and are therefore played mercifully seldom. Harmonica
players, tubists, perpetrators of the piccolo, heckelphonophiles, and ondesistes du
martenots all have their sonatas or concertos written by composers someone somewhere
might have heard of. But the ocarina? A few tootles in the odd Janácek, Ligeti, or
Respighi composition -- that's it.
So Copley arranged most of the selections here (along with
a few contributions by Michael S. Murray and Maurice Hodges). Some -- the finale from
Beethoven's Symphony No. 1, the prelude to Act III of Wagner's Lohengrin -- derive
their freshness from their sheer outlandishness. The Wagner has been likened to observing
the work "through the wrong end of a telescope" (albeit "so much clearer
with ocarinas than with trombones").
But most of the disc makes you forget the improbability of
its premise. Michael S. Murray's arrangement of Offenbach's "Can-Can" is rousing
good fun, as are Copley's settings of three songs from Sir Arthur Sullivan’s H.M.S.
Pinafore and The Mikado. The folk songs from Japan, Sicily, and China are
seductively charming -- and three Romanian pieces that have all of the fierce energy and
chaotic drive of Bartók's field recordings of Gypsy music. My favorite is a setting of
the anonymous 16th-century "My Lady Carey's Dompe," which has a melancholy
sonority that I find as soothing as it is beautiful.
Is The Classic Ocarina just a gag? Not at all. It's
not entirely (perhaps not even remotely) serious, but it's skilled musicmaking, and it's
fun. It's also extremely well recorded -- audiophiles will have a field day placing the
members of the quartet and the other musicians within the disc's well-defined soundstage.
This is no inconsequential gratification -- many of the arrangements are as complex as
clockwork, the tunes frequently bouncing from player to player, generating fascinating
leaps from voice to voice. We're talking seriously aerobic soundstaging here.
That alone would be enough to put a smile on any
audiophile's face, but The Classic Ocarina's charm, great sound, and road-tested
melodies are all worth paying attention to as well. Not a gag at all -- just a pleasure.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
|
