New Jersey-based label Phoenix, like its namesake, raises significant classical recordings from the ashes. With the inelegantly titled Harrison/Ung/McPhee, Phoenix manages to resurrect one of the finest recordings of contemporary music to appear on a major label in the 1990s, a 1994 effort by the
American Composers Orchestra under
Dennis Russell Davies that originally appeared on U.K. Decca's imprint Argo. It features the Suite for Symphonic Strings of
Lou Harrison, originally commissioned for the
Louisville Orchestra in 1961 and first recorded under Robert Whitney for the orchestra's own label. The Suite for Symphonic Strings is one of
Harrison's characteristic suites, cobbled together out of various movements ranging from throughout his career. However, this particular suite is one of his most successful efforts in that vein, and
Harrison utilizes tasteful percussion to underscore imaginative tropes of old dance forms, ranging from French renaissance dances to the music evocative of Pacific Rim cultures, though he does not directly invoke them here. The other older work is Colin McPhee's imaginative concerto Tabuh-Tabuhan (1936) based on Balinese music; at the time
Davies recorded it for Decca, this important work hadn't been seen on discs since
Howard Hanson waxed it in the 1950s with Eastman-Rochester. In the years to follow 1995, Tabuh-Tabuhan has been rediscovered in Canada -- McPhee was a Canadian native -- and has become quite popular there. The third, and most imaginative choice of the program, is Inner Voices by Cambodian composer
Chinary Ung; this wildly colorful and strongly colorful piece is extremely flexible in terms of its approach to orchestration, and while unconventional, something about it captures the ear. Though
Ung had appeared on recordings before, Inner Voices -- in a very real sense -- made his reputation.
Davies' Argo disc made a conspicuous number of strides in its time, among them it demonstrated that contemporary orchestral music need not be punishing or uncompromisingly repetitive to be fresh, and that there is a sense of continuity from composers such as
Harrison and McPhee to later developments, which, in mid-century, were regarded as isolated and cut off. It is certainly a welcome prospect to have this one back; however, one might want the reissue CD to reflect what the original is like, and for some reason the Phoenix issue doesn't quite pass muster. It is a little tinnier than and not as crisp as the Argo original, and the editing of individual tracks seems to fall a little harder on one another, particularly openings of tracks. Nevertheless, for those who missed this great CD the first time it came around, the Phoenix CD is an option, though between that and the older Argo version, the latter should be preferred.