National Brass Ensemble, Eun Sun Kim – Deified (2023) [FLAC 24bit/192kHz]

National Brass Ensemble, Eun Sun Kim – Deified (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:40:08 minutes | 3,41 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone

The National Brass Ensemble (NBE) and conductor Eun Sun Kim present Deified, an album containing music by Wagner and Strauss, as well as world premiere recordings of pieces by Jonathan Bingham and Arturo Sandoval. Bingham won the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and San Francisco Symphony’s Emerging Black Composers Project competition with his cinematic composition Deified, while composer/trumpet player Sandoval is a legend in the brass world. The longest piece on this album is Timothy Higgins’s The Ring, a virtuosic recomposition of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen scored for brass ensemble. Together, these pieces showcase the exceptional coloristic and expressive range of brass music. Consisting of some of the best players from leading U.S. orchestras, the National Brass Ensemble is one of the greatest brass groups of our time. Eun Sun Kim is Caroline H. Hume Music Director of the San Francisco Opera, and frequents the most important opera houses and concert halls of the world. The NBE and Kim both make their Pentatone debut.It may have been surprising to see this release by a newish U.S. ensemble show up on British classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2023. Several factors may have contributed, one being the marketing muscle of the PentaTone Classics label and another being that label’s engineering staff getting splendid results from a live 2021 concert at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall. A third factor might be the unusual large brass ensemble format: there are 31 players, allowing an unusually large palette of sounds and textures. This is especially effective in the work that takes up the whole second CD and second part of the program, The Ring, a condensation of Wagner’s entire Ring cycle by Timothy Higgins. This hits many of the familiar pieces from those four operas, which of course, contain a great deal of writing for brass in the first place. There are other unfamiliar and intriguing pieces: a rare fanfare by Richard Strauss, the title work by Jonathan Bingham, which is palindromic in several respects, and a pleasing, lightly Latin-accented Brass Fantasy of Arturo Sandoval. The National Brass Ensemble is not a standing group but one drawn from top players in various U.S. orchestras (the San Francisco Symphony has the largest group); conductor Eun Sun Kim’s direction is crisp, and the virtuosity of several of the players is notable although the cohesion of a well-drilled chamber group is impossible. There have been several other instrumental “summaries” of the Ring, but this one is both unusual and engaging. A must for brass fans. – James Manheim

Tracklist:

1-1. National Brass Ensemble – Vienna Philharmonic Fanfare, TrV 248 (02:18)
1-2. National Brass Ensemble – Deified (10:56)
1-3. National Brass Ensemble – I. Fanfare (01:35)
1-4. National Brass Ensemble – II. (02:59)
1-5. National Brass Ensemble – III. (02:08)
1-6. National Brass Ensemble – IV. (01:34)
2-1. National Brass Ensemble – I. The Rhine (04:25)
2-2. National Brass Ensemble – I. From Walhalla to Nibelheim and Back (06:15)
2-3. National Brass Ensemble – II. Siegmund’s Flight (03:48)
2-4. National Brass Ensemble – II. Love Theme (02:40)
2-5. National Brass Ensemble – II. Hunding’s Arrival (01:57)
2-6. National Brass Ensemble – II. Wotan and Brünnhilde’s Arrival (02:40)
2-7. National Brass Ensemble – II. Siegmund’s Death (02:35)
2-8. National Brass Ensemble – II. Ride of the Valkyries (02:11)
2-9. National Brass Ensemble – II. Wotan’s Goodbye and Magic Fire Music (04:21)
2-10. National Brass Ensemble – III. Siegfried and Mime (04:48)
2-11. National Brass Ensemble – III. Forest Murmurings (02:11)
2-12. National Brass Ensemble – III. Siegfried’s Horn Call (02:03)
2-13. National Brass Ensemble – III. Siegfried Slays the Dragon (05:28)
2-14. National Brass Ensemble – IV. Dawn – Brünnhilde and Siegfried (03:15)
2-15. National Brass Ensemble – IV. Siegfried’s Rhine Journey (06:20)
2-16. National Brass Ensemble – IV. Hagen’s Watch Call (01:25)
2-17. National Brass Ensemble – IV. Siegfried and the Rhinemaidens (02:56)
2-18. National Brass Ensemble – IV. Siegfried’s Death and Goodbye (04:45)
2-19. National Brass Ensemble – IV. Siegfried’s Funeral March (07:01)
2-20. National Brass Ensemble – IV. Brünnhilde Returns the Ring (07:34)

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