The National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic may be an occasional ensemble, tied to annual festivals at the University of Maryland, but they have set a high standard for performances in their concerts and recordings, securing a 2019 Grammy nomination for a previous release (9/18). A following release featured the Fifth Symphony by Walter Piston, whose celebrated suite from the ballet The Incredible Flutist (1938) concludes their newest offering. A good number of fine rival recordings are available, listed below. Hanson’s is showing its age now (the crowd noises in the ‘Circus March’ are very muted) but sounds more ‘Spanish’ than any other. Bernstein and Slatkin are the best of the rest, but Falletta in this new, brightly recorded performance of this hugely entertaining score can bear comparison with any. Fun as the raucous circus numbers are, the finest playing lies in the lilting ‘Tango of the Merchant’s Daughters’ and the beguiling ‘The Flutist’.

The orchestra are superb accompanists, too. Ulysses Kay (1917‑95) composed his early Pietà (1950) in Rome, and it is a beautifully languid, wistful tone poem, lovingly rendered by Anna Mattix, who gave an equally emotive streamed performance with Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic in 2021 on YouTube. (Blue Griffin has also just released the cor anglais-and-piano reduction.) By contrast, Paul Creston’s Saxophone Concerto (1941) runs the gamut of moods from the dramatic and lyrical to the bright and breezy, often within the same movement. Better known through its 1963 wind-band arrangement, I find the orchestral original more attractive, though Timothy McAllister would be a persuasive advocate in any format.

The youngest work opens proceedings. Copland’s The Tender Land (1952‑54, rev 1955) has remained in the shadows whether as an opera or the 1958 suite its composer extracted and recorded (more than once). His Boston performance (RCA, 3/61) is the benchmark but, again, Falletta and the NOIP score in a finely judged interpretation and superior, more modern sound.