Orchestration was Duke Ellington's forte, and it is not a great challenge to adapt his works for full symphony orchestra. The challenge is even slighter in the large tone poems with which Ellington occupied himself for most of the later part of his career; these works, which make up the bulk of the program here, are already written for large group and are replete with instrumental effects. Generally speaking, the arrangers here have transferred some of the wind lines to the orchestral strings and left Ellington's brass ...
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Orchestration was Duke Ellington's forte, and it is not a great challenge to adapt his works for full symphony orchestra. The challenge is even slighter in the large tone poems with which Ellington occupied himself for most of the later part of his career; these works, which make up the bulk of the program here, are already written for large group and are replete with instrumental effects. Generally speaking, the arrangers here have transferred some of the wind lines to the orchestral strings and left Ellington's brass writing intact. Indeed, the biggest problem with these works is not as classical music -- Ellington's ambitions clearly went in that direction -- but as jazz: the solos were written for musicians with whom Ellington worked closely, and nobody else can quite duplicate their particular texture and snap. This said, the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra under JoAnn Falletta is filled with musicians with plenty of experience in performing jazz, and this release is nowhere less than enjoyable. Its...
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