PERILLO Brass Symphony, Crushed Tomatoes, Lullaby for Orchestra, Requiem for a Goldfish

Yuval Waldman, cond; Russian Festival O  CENTAUR CRC 2445 (46:47)

This is a thoroughly winning disc, from the music to the performances to the charming and winning cover art depicting a goldfish bowl housing a miniature St. Basil's Cathedral. Stephen Perillo owns a travel agency in New Jersey that provides him with his day job. His evenings are devoted, apparently, to composition, and in this endeavor he is quite well trained, being a student of David Del Tredici. One can sense Del Tredici's influence in the colorful, large-scale orchestration, the highly tuneful melodies as well as the assured sense of form. I suppose someone might find the music either vulgar or simple-minded, and, indeed, Perillo describes it as pop music poured into classical forms, but I was delighted.

The titles are all fairly whimsical. You have never heard a lullaby as athletic as this one more exuberant Requiem. The Brass Symphony naturally employs the full orchestra with perhaps less emphasis on the brass section than the rest of the music here. The three-part Brass Symphony brings out further stylistic connections to Prokofiev and Shostakovich that the Russian performers naturally seize upon. The playing time is regrettably short, but that is the only complaint I have about this marvelously played and recorded collection. This one is definitely a keeper.

— by John Story