Gould: American Ballads; Foster Gallery; American Salute. Theodore Kuchar, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. Naxos 8.559005.(Review)

Gould: American Ballads; Foster Gallery; American Salute. Theodore Kuchar, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. Naxos 8.559005.

The surprise here, and a delightful one, is not that conductor and composer Morton Gould successfully orchestrated so many fine, old American folk tunes; most people who are familiar with 20th-century American music already know and appreciate the man and his work. No, the surprise is that a Ukrainian conductor and orchestra would bring them off so idiomatically and with such enthusiasm and charm.

The program begins with a series of short tunes from 1976, the "Star-Spangled Overture" an appropriate starting point, through "Amber Waves," "Jubilio," "Memorials," "Saratoga Quickstep," and "Hymnals." The core of the disc, however, is a collection called "Foster Gallery" (1939), in which Gould connects some of Stephen Foster's most memorable songs with a few of his lesser-known things in a kind of Pictures From an Exhibition layout, with variations on "Camptown Races" the thread holding the ...