Shifting Landscapes

Review:
This is hands-down the best surround sound orchestral recording I have ever heard. Pardon my starting with the techy stuff since the music is so terrific too, but all two-channel diehards who think surround for music is absurd must hear this multichannel SACD on a properly set up system with identical speakers all the way around. I find it even images fantastically when you are outside the area bounded by the five main speakers - just like good Ambisonic playback. The acoustic perspective the label achieves seems to be right in the middle of the orchestra (and my surround speakers are equa-distant to me from the front trio of speakers) - the tubular bell in the Sumera symphony is uncanny in its presence. It appears to be towards the left rear of one's listening position. Somehow with this sort of music the center perspective works perfectly, involving the listener to the utmost.

This German label seems to be leading the way in Europe with multichannel SACD recordings. They used the new Sonoma DSD recorder/editor plus A/D and D/A converters designed by Ed Meitner. The music is equally fine - a pair of modern orchestral works growing out of the minimalist movement by creating what the liner note writer calls "a new sensuality of sound" free from the bounds of serial conformity. And both works sounds as though they could be by the same composer though in truth one hails from California and the other from Estonia. Adams' Fearful Symmetries is as symmetrical as its title indicates, but this is not the Philip Glass type of minimalism by any means. His orchestra, enlarged with synthesizer and saxophones, as well as his general sound-world, is similar to Adams' opera Nixon in China. The SACD then closes out with the composer's big hit from that opera, the foxtrot for orchestra The Chairman Dances.

Sumera, who died in 2000, combines traditional and contemporary techniques in a music influenced by the landscapes and heritage of his country as well as its political struggles. His three-movement symphony is based on themes from an earlier violin-piano sonata by the composer and spins endless melodies in a fantasy-type of structure. Watch the counter because you may not be able to tell where Adams ends and Sumera begins. - John Sunier

Recorded at Norrlands Opera, Umeå, Sweden, May 2001 in 5-channel Direct Stream Digital (DSD)

This Stereo/Multichannel Hybrid SACD can be played on any compact disc player.