Song for America.  Symphony 1.  Oboe Serenade.  Hangoverture o Yuval Waldman, cond; SO, St. Petersburg o CENTAUR 2885 (49:44)

Here’s the latest offering from Stephen Perillo, classical composer by night, and president of Perillo Tours by day.  Founded in 1945 by his grandfather, and expanded by his father, Perillo Tours has, in the words of grandson Stephen, “take(n) more people to Italy than any other tour company in the world.”  That’s not really relevant to this CD, but it’s interesting, and I guess it does clue you in that Perillo is an eclectic soul, and not a beard-stroking academic ensconced in a music school.  He did, nevertheless, study extensively with David Del Tredici at Boson University.  This is the fifth CD of his music to be released by Centaur Records.  Note that Hangoverture also appears on an earlier CD, so the present disc contains only about 37 minutes of new material.)

I am sure Perillo takes composing seriously.  His music suggests that he doesn’t take himself seriously, though, and that’s okay.  While it would be unfair to call his music naïve, and even more unfair to call it amateurish, there’s innocence here, and a gratifying lack of pretension that one associates with both naifs and amateurs.  If Perillo decided to get all Mahlerian on us, I don’t think I would like the results.  (But who knows?)  Bite-sized and modest, however, and more fun than profound, his music works well.  There’s nothing wrong with being a Leroy Anderson for the new millennium.


The first movement of the Symphony No. 1 opens and closes disconcertingly with moaning winds and thunder, and what comes in between is very much in the vein of Beetlejuice-era Danny Elfman.  (“Polka party from hell” is a phrase that comes up a lot.)  So far so good.  Perhaps with his tongue in cheek, Perillo refers to the second movement as an “ecstatic Lisztian romance.”  I found it more Ivesian, with its unexpected juxtapositions and its moments of calculatedly questionable taste, although I doubt Ives would have written anything this kaleidoscopic.  The symphony ends with a “Dance in 6/8” that suggests Irish leprechauns tap-dancing their way across the world’s largest pizza pie.  Again, Perillo forgoes the development of his ideas in favor of a progressively mutating processional of changing colors, textures and moods.

Song for America is set of “variations on an original theme,” and was composed for a 9/11 memorial concert.  “It’s an anthem to a country,” Perillo writes, “until countries are no longer necessary.”  (Hear, hear.)  The original theme sounds like “America” (My country, ‘tis of thee”) and “God Bless America” genetically recombined.  The theme-and-variations format is kind to Perillo’s writing, which again, seems to be based more on continuously morphine themes than on developing them.  This is patriotism without pomposity, though, so the work’s formal shortcomings can be overlooked. 

The Oboe Serenade was commissioned by H. David Myers, whom Perillo describes as a “businessman, oboist extraordinaire, and general enthusiast of life.”  Perillo comes up with some charming ideas here, but as with the other works on this CD, the promise of the opening pages is not wholly sustained by the entirety of the work, which is too episodic to make complete sense – to me, anyway!  The CD ends with the aforementioned Hangoverture (shades of the Kansas album Leftoverture and the Tubes song, “Getoverture!” which is subtitled “December 31, 1999—A night to remember.”  Perillo writes, “This tone poem is an escapade through the 20^th century with bows to Stravinsky, Copeland (sic), jazz, pop, and movie music.”  In other words, it’s typical Perillo:  if you don’t like the way the music sounds, go in the other room and come back 10 seconds later, because by then it will have changed completely.

— by Raymond Tuttle