With their sizable membership and prominent horn section, the Suffers might look (and sometimes sound) like one of the many soul revival acts that have risen into public consciousness in the wake of the success of Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, but a listen to the group's debut album makes it clear they're up to something a bit different. The Suffers documents a band whose music speaks to the past and the present at once; these ten musicians clearly have a soft spot for classic soul and R&B, but there's also a big portion of jazz, pop, classic rock, and reggae bubbling up in their music, and in some respects, this music harkens back to the era of adventurous rock bands with horn sections (like Blood, Sweat & Tears, 10 Wheel Drive, and Chicago in their prime) as much as mid-'60s soul.
First and foremost, Domenico Scarlatti is regarded as the greatest composer of binary harpsichord sonatas of all time, and that is as it should be: he wrote more than 600 of them and many are constantly recorded and played. However, early in his Italian career, Scarlatti developed a proven track record as a composer of sacred music, some of it under the watchful eye of his father, Alessandro Scarlatti, believed by many at the time as the top composer of the age. The fact most readily observed in regard to Domenico's sacred music is that his Stabat mater, composed in 1717 or 1718, was the work within that genre replaced in Rome by Giovanni Pergolesi's Stabat mater around 1735. The Scarlatti work was conceived in a different style to different strictures; while it has become the most recorded of Scarlatti's sacred works, it definitely suffers when paired with the Pergolesi owing to its immediacy and familiarity. On Coro's Iste Confessor, the Sixteen led by Harry Christophers widely opt for Scarlatti's own, other sacred music as filler to the "Stabat mater with results fairer to the composer and quite favorable to listeners.
The Sundowners' sole album suffers from the problems afflicting many similarly obscure late-'60s pop/rock LPs on major labels. One, the group can't really decide what they want to be, which though leading to some admirable versatility, also ensures a sort of anonymity. Two, there aren't any really good songs, though one or two come close. It might be backhanded praise, but as those sort of records go, this is considerably above the average; the production's very good and full, the singing and harmonies are decent and committed, and the Sundowners play pretty well. Still, they almost sound like different groups from track to track, or at the very least like they're not quite sure whether to be all-out commercial, or try and slip some hipness in on the side…
This is an excellent Mahler Ninth. It does not feature the tortured anguish of Bernstein (Sony & DG), the elegant pain of Giulini (DG), or the stately gloom of Walter (Sony), but, like Libor Pesek (Virgin Classics), it successfully straddles more than a few fences. But "straddling fences" does not imply it's middle-of-the-road–it is, in fact, more middle-of-the-night. Dohnányi often makes inner voices turn disruptive, yet coaxes the strings to sound both sweet and eerie in their heavy use of portamento; and he is scrupulous in extracting just about every last meaningful detail in this monumental work.
This is a grand, satisfying performance on almost every count. Its stature allows me for the moment to put aside the baggage of all earlier recordings and assess it on its own merits alone. In the first place, following on his successful Rheingold (Decca, 11/95), Dohnanyi conducts a well-paced, thought-through reading that at once creates dramatic excitement and attends to the longer view. From the opening storm right through to the Magic Fire Music there’s a welcome sense of forward movement everywhere, except in the middle of Act 2 where in places Dohnanyi slows down inordinately, allowing the score to become momentarily becalmed.