Victor Herbert’s output was large but uneven. The Auditorium Festival March that opens this collection is one work I imagine few would want to hear too often, being largely an overblown reworking of Auld Lang Syne. Conductor and annotator Keith Brion convincingly suggests that Herbert was using it to get even with the Chicago management for whom he wrote it. Much more impressive is the selection from the serious opera Natoma, staged in Philadelphia in 1911 with Mary Garden and John McCormack in leading roles. Full of dark, brooding melodies, this same selection was previously recorded by Donald Hunsberger and the Eastman-Dryden Orchestra on a 1986 Arabesque CD (Z6561 – nla), but without the power and conviction that Brion and his full symphony orchestra provide.
The major interest, though, must lie in the two concert works, of which the Irish Rhapsody is an impressively impassioned and skilful interweaving of themes from Herbert’s native country. Not only the melodies but also the format are very different from Leroy Anderson’s Irish Suite, to cite another American light music composer’s transatlantic tribute. Perhaps even more impressive still is the Columbus Suite. The opening Moorish-tinged movements may be less striking in their thematic content than native Spanish composers could achieve; but the final two movements’ portrayal of the sea in alternately reflective and powerfully surging moods gives this work a significant status in the ranks of American orchestral suites. Once more, Marco Polo has us hugely in its debt.'