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Reveries / Eiji Oue, Minnesota Orchestra

Release Date: 08/06/2002
Label: Reference Recordings Catalog #: 99 Spars Code: n/a
Composer:  Erik Satie ,  Gabriel Fauré ,  Edvard Grieg ,  Jules Massenet  ...  Performer:  Anthony Ross ,  Adam Kuenzel ,  Marni J. Hougham Conductor:  Eiji Oue Orchestra/Ensemble:  Minnesota Orchestra Number of Discs: 1
Recorded in: Stereo Length: 1 Hours 9 Mins.

This selection is a HDCD (High Definition Compact Disc) recording.

It's that time of year. The strings of lights seem a little bleary, the curbs are lined with dessicated trees, and snow has given way to sleet. It's the perfect time to huddle up at home and indulge a little sweet melancholy, and boy, have Eiji Oue and the Minnesota Orchestra provided the soundtrack for you.

As the liner notes are careful to point out, this is not "nap time," nor is it just mist-and-unicorns dreaminess. It's a wonderfully programmed album that picks up on the theme of reverie as a journey: each piece moves at a docile, ambling pace. Each has a welcome familiarity but none is threadbare from overexposure: Satie's Read more Gymnopedies 1 & 3 (in Debussy's elegant orchestration) bookend a collection of instigators to musing: Fauré's Pavane, and Ravel's Pavane for a Dead Princess, Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Solveig's song from Grieg's Peer Gynt; you get the idea. The sentimentality is omnipresent and the sound of the orchestra is massive, but you need fear no schmalz: Oue moves the andantes at a just-leisurely-enough pace and keeps the textures bouyant and clear. Reveries is perfectly suited to daydreaming, but the playing is substantive enough to keep bringing you back to the music.


David Simmons, WQXR
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