Schickele recalls warmth of winds
The Boston Globe, November 21, 1995

Wind ensembles remind us of a gentler time, when no town was too small to be able to support a band, and if you wanted to hear Bruckner's Eighth, well, you could arrange it for whatever nine instruments you had at hand. It's good to know that the nostalgic legacy of the wind band is alive and well as evidenced by a new work commissioned from Peter Schickele for the Metropolitan Wind Symphony's 25th anniversary.

With Metropolitan Wind Serenade, Schickele came up with a compact work (under 15 minutes) that stayed within the framework of traditional band writing while exploring the colors and textures offered by the ensemble's instrumentation with understanding and affection. Schickele bestowed descriptive titles on each of the serenade's five movements ("Summer Day on the Banks of the Charles," "Times Square," "Nocturne: Golden Gate," "St. Paul Sunday Stroll" and "Git Outa Town!"), and while he warned us in his witty introduction that programmatic music is mainly in the ear of the listener, they certainly added to the charm of the aural journey he took us on.

Some of the whimsical touches included the fanfare of muted trumpets and percussion that opened "Summer Day" (a nice homage to the band genre) and the Gershwinesque depiction of big city life in "Times Square" with the big brass blaring, interjections of taxi horns from the cornets, and a police siren and whistle. And there was subtle scoring in "Nocturne" with euphoniums echoing the fog rolling in and a comely oboe solo weaving above, joined by the other two oboes in an exotic Eastern twist. The work received a sprightly performance under David Martins. With its good humor and sparkling scoring, Metropolitan Wind Serenade should stand up for inclusion in the ensemble's golden anniversary celebration.