Trombonist
James Nova's 2005 album Albanian Rhapsody is a collection of pieces for trombone and orchestra by his father, Anesti Nova, an Albanian accordionist who took up orchestration studies and composition in his sixties. As a result of this extremely late development,
Nova's music is harmonically conventional, simply orchestrated, and strung together from easygoing, folk-like themes; in its emphasis on ethnic melodies, it sounds in many ways like a throwback to nineteenth century nationalism. A late Romantic style dominates his overly long concerto for trombone and orchestra on Albanian Folk Melodies, yet because the song component overrides the usual expectations of the genre, the work seems like a continuous, free-form tone poem with cadenzas. The shorter pieces -- Valse Triste (In memoriam Sept. 11th, 2001), Meditation, and the blatantly
Enescu-like Albanian Rhapsody with trombone obbligato -- also reflect
Nova's musical naïveté, though their shorter durations make them less tedious than the concerto and easier to tolerate for their lack of pretensions.
James Nova clearly understands his father's works better than anyone, and lends them a genuinely heartfelt expression, which almost makes up for their obvious deficiencies of technique and originality. Valery Vatchev and the Symphonika Bulgarika infuse the music with a bit more schmaltz than it -- or the listener -- can bear, but for this extremely simple but emotionally driven fare, that's about the only interpretive choice open to them. Summit's sound is rich and vibrant.