CHICHESTER PSALMS

"Marin Alsop follows up her excellent Samuel Barber series for Naxos with works by her one-time mentor, Leonard Bernstein. For the most part, she and the Bournemouth Symphony deliver the goods. The suite Bernstein fashioned from his lone film score, On the Waterfront, contains some of this composer's most vibrant and involving music, where no section of the orchestra goes under-utilized. Everything in the score clearly stands out under Alsop's eagle eyes and ears, with syncopated rhythms and canonic passages securely aligned and the Bournemouth brass at their assertive best (especially in the final Allegro non troppo section)...The Bournemouth strings come into their own in Chichester Psalms, notably in the third-movement prelude. Alsop's brisk tempos serve the first movement's insouciant asymmetry well, and she makes the third movement's lyrical points through strict dynamic gradations and steady tempos (it's so tempting to milk this music to death!). The chorus is expertly prepared,