"john Banville" Snow

Following the success of last year’s release of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, John Wilson and Sinfonia of London turn their attention to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel. As in the case of the previous release in the series, this world première recording of the complete score features every note of music played at the first Broadway performance, here in the full thirty-five-piece orchestration made by Don Walker for the original production. The outstanding cast, led by Nathaniel Hackmann (Billy Bigelow), Mikaela Bennett (Julie Jordan), Sierra Boggess (Carrie Pipperidge), and Julian Ovenden (Enoch Snow), also features Francesca Chiejina (Nettie Fowler) and David Seadon-Young (Jigger Craigin).

The Dacapo label enters the graphic territory of its rival ECM here, with clean black-and-white graphics and sans serif fonts and equally crisp contemporary music that makes no concessions to popular taste but nevertheless offers a kind of accessibility. It is easy enough to imagine Schnee (snow in German – not Danish, interestingly) in composer Hans Abrahamsen's work, which fills the entire album. The music begins with an almost imperceptible high violin note as if to suggest sub-sensory beginnings of a period of snow. Abrahamsen has evinced a fascination with snow in other works, but it is perhaps reduced to its essence here.

Hans Abrahamsen’s feelings for snow are reflected in the titles of his works, for example in Winternacht, in the opera The Snow Queen and more straightforwardly in Schnee. In his music, the snow has many different states, and the colours are graduated with finely felt accuracy: snow white, cool blue white, blinding white, crystal clear.

Hank Snow deserves some kind of award for The Jimmie Rodgers Story. There are not many that can present Rodgers’ material with such an authentic quality…

On Blues Is a Feeling, the late guitarist-vocalist Jesse Thomas delivers straightforward, rural-sounding blues in an intimate, drumless session from 1992 with pianist Jodie Christian and second guitarist John Primer. Thomas was 81 years old at the time of this recording, just three years before his death. And though his voice sounds somewhat frail here-and probably would’ve been overwhelmed by the sound of drums-Primer and Christian provide light, elegant accompaniment that puts Thomas’ soft yet expressive vocals in the foreground. And Thomas proves to be a humorous storyteller on tunes like “Married Woman Blues,” “She Throwed Me Clothes Outdoor” and “Santa Claus.”