When
Louis Armstrong scaled new heights of individualistic jazz virtuosity in a work like West End Blues, he was drawing partly on a tradition that is almost lost to modern listeners. Today the marching band music is thought of mostly as an ensemble music, but in
Sousa's day it had a strong solo component exemplified by Herbert Lincoln Clarke. Clarke, whom the booklet notes for this fine Norwegian release call "perhaps...the greatest cornet player of all time," is represented on the program here along with a variety of other composers, mostly European, in virtuoso music for cornet and military band. Like another Norwegian band music release from the Swedish label BIS, this might seem to be of the most interest to Scandinavians and band players. But don't knock it until you sample it. The level of instrumental accomplishment displayed by the
Royal Norwegian Navy Band is on a par with that of any symphony orchestra, and the technical command of cornetist
Ole Edvard Antonsen is gripping. You might not think that Saeterjentens Sondag (The Herdmaiden's Sunday) of famed touring violinist Ole Bull would make the transition to the cornet, but the arrangement of this and other pieces from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are exemplary in themselves. By no means is the music, much of which must be receiving its first recording, confined exclusively to the march tradition; the Slawische Fantasie (Slavic Fantasy) of Carl Höhne is an ambitious work that builds from free material in a slow tempo very gradually to an explosive finale, and most of the pieces are comparable in terms of sectional divisions to some of the bigger Johann Strauss II favorites. The sound is up to the usual high standards for which BIS is renowned, and in general this is not only a good gift for brass players but something of a small revelation, and a lot of fun, for anybody at all.