Around the last turn of the century, brass ensemble music was enjoying a vogue, with groups like the Canadian Brass filling auditorium-sized halls. Then the pendulum swung too far in the other direction, and now the septet Septura has been finding commercial success with its Music for Brass Septet series, here reaching its seventh volume. One does not luxuriate in the smooth textures of this group quite as much as with some others, yet they have a great virtue in a genre where most music is arranged: they balance technical ...
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Around the last turn of the century, brass ensemble music was enjoying a vogue, with groups like the Canadian Brass filling auditorium-sized halls. Then the pendulum swung too far in the other direction, and now the septet Septura has been finding commercial success with its Music for Brass Septet series, here reaching its seventh volume. One does not luxuriate in the smooth textures of this group quite as much as with some others, yet they have a great virtue in a genre where most music is arranged: they balance technical elegance with facility in arranging music imaginatively. In this respect, this album devoted to Gershwin and Copland makes a good place to start with Septura. The program is organized so that the group proceeds from the easiest to the most difficult in terms of the challenge of arranging the music, and this has a satisfying effect. Gershwin's An American in Paris had a lot of brass and winds to begin with, and it transfers relatively straightforwardly to the all-brass medium, even...
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