The Pops' 'Sleigh Ride' has its ups and downs
Those who love Holiday Pops are going to love ''Sleigh Ride," the Boston Pops' first self-produced recording. Those who feel reservations will not find them lifted by this album.
The CD is chock-full of arrangements that didn't exist when the last Pops holiday record was made seven years ago, as well as some perennial favorites, such as the ''Hallelujah" Chorus from Handel's ''Messiah" and ''O Holy Night." Last time out, the Pops recorded the version of Leroy Anderson's ''Sleigh Ride" with chorus; this time conductor Keith Lockhart chose the orchestral original.
Lockhart also demonstrated enterprise by programming Respighi's rarely heard ''The Adoration of the Magi" from ''Three Botticelli Pictures," at nearly nine minutes the longest track on the CD. The piece is a lovely meditation on the ancient carol ''O Come, O Come Emmanuel."
The most attractive of the new arrangements is by the Pops' own Patrick Hollenbeck, ''Songs From the Hill Folk," which collects such pieces as ''I Wonder as I Wander" and ''Go Tell It on the Mountain." The ''Winter Weather Medley" is also fun -- ''I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, " ''I Love the Winter Weather," and ''Baby, It's Cold Outside." Those who grew up to '''Twas the Night Before Christmas" sung by Fred Waring & His Pennsylvanians or the Harry Simeone Chorale will be happy to encounter this tuneful and amusing setting of the famous poem again.
It's harder to warm up to ''Joy to the World," orchestrated by Randol Alan Bass in the style of ''Raiders of the Lost Ark," or to Don Sebesky's mugging of the ''Hallelujah" Chorus in a medley called ''Joy!"
Two vocal soloists who have appeared with the Pops also sing on the record -- tenor Alfred Boe, heard in '''Twas the Night Before Christmas" and ''O Holy Night," and gospel singer Renese King in ''Do You Hear What I Hear?" Boe sings straightforwardly and well without banishing the memory of how gloriously soprano Dominique Labelle used to sing ''O Holy Night" in French and English during the John Williams era. King has been fabulous in Gospel Night programs, and she has become a great audience favorite on Pops tours, but she is not helped here by an arrangement that confines her vocal range and her exuberantly improvisatory musical personality. The most prominent of the instrumental soloists is saxophonist Michael Monaghan, heard on two lively tracks; Pops cellist Owen Young contributes his delightfully tuneful whistle to '''Twas the Night Before Christmas."
The heroes and heroines of the recording are the members of the Pops and the volunteers of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, who sound fully in the spirit of the season -- even though the recording was made last September. Lockhart contributes energy, pizazz, and a pleasantly personal program note.
Technically the recording is first-rate, and the recorded sound is spectacular. On the front, Lockhart is seen in a sleigh, pointing downward as Mr. S. Claus holds the reins. In other respects the presentation could use improvement. Surely someone in Symphony Hall knows that Handel's most famous work is entitled ''Messiah," not ''The Messiah" -- an error made twice in the program book.
Christmas is both a religious festival and a totally commercialized holiday, and the way the album, like Holiday Pops, shuttles back and forth between the two aspects as if there were no difference between them is disturbing. To place the ''Hallelujah!" Chorus directly after '''Twas the Night Before Christmas" demonstrates deficient taste and judgment. To juxtapose these two pieces proclaims that music doesn't really mean anything, let alone what it says. But the music and the texts are conveying another message.
