Robert Russell Bennett led a double life both as a composer in his own right and as Broadway's most successful orchestrator. The two works coupled here both date from 1929 and form a complementary pair, one piece being clearly programmatic, the other more abstract. Bennett's "Lincoln" Symphony is a sober, sincere, very attractively written work notable for its lack of pretension. A character study worthy to rank with Elgar's Falstaff or Strauss' Don Juan, Bennett's symphony manages to cover a wide range of mood without resorting to a Broadway orchestrator's usual bag of tricks: excessive harp glissandos, rippling celesta passages, heroic horn tunes capped by cymbals and glockenspiel--that sort of thing. He deploys his large orchestra with a true symphonist's care for clarifying the musical argument, and saves the razzle-dazzle for Sights and Sounds, an ever so vaguely Gershwinesque celebration of American urban life with more than a passing touch of humor in the two movements called, respectively, "Highbrows" and "Lowbrows". These pieces deserve to enter the repertoire of American orchestras, and the performances by Stromberg & Co. are more successful here than on these same performers' recent disc of symphonies by Meredith Willson. Ensemble seems tighter, and the recording perspectives remain stable throughout both works. A distinguished entry in Naxos' ongoing American music series. [11/20/1999]

--David Hurwitz