I was fortunate enough to actually watch Fred Fennell from backstage do a full rehearsal with the Eastman Wind Ensemble back in 1990 and he had this march on his program. He was notorious for taking out repeats and accentuating different things - taking off the last note, during the melody in the trio as it rose and fell, accentuating the snare drum part with a two measure crescendo / diminuendo, etc. In fact Fred made many recordings with the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra and the conductor copied Fred's signature move in the last strain as if he were swinging a baseball bat! That was 100% a Fennell move and by the smile on his face I believe he knew that!! Imitation IS the sincerest form of flattery. Lastly as a former band director I made many of the alterations to the march - which are admittedly non-traditional - and performed it that way when I took my band to their annual performance assessment. Each adjudicator had to have a copy of my score with all of the markings, etc. - I also included a note to each that said something to the effect of (paraphrasing) 'Before you judge too harshly on my interpretation, you need to consider that it was taken from the man who made this arrangement' - and I included a copy of the program from the Eastman Wind Ensemble, along with Fred's autograph to me on the cover. Needless to say, it certainly helped - also helped knowing my adjudicators were also more "old school" as I was (although much younger at the time, I learned from some of the best of that era!) and would be adverse to such changes without any rationale behind them. One thing to say you copied an interpretation that Fennell might have done, totally another to have been able to back it up! Point being, this interpretation was probably the one they were most familiar with, having worked with Fennell for so many years and that is why they played it the way they did.
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Beautiful playing.
But I wish they had played it WITH the repeats!
I was fortunate enough to actually watch Fred Fennell from backstage do a full rehearsal with the Eastman Wind Ensemble back in 1990 and he had this march on his program. He was notorious for taking out repeats and accentuating different things - taking off the last note, during the melody in the trio as it rose and fell, accentuating the snare drum part with a two measure crescendo / diminuendo, etc. In fact Fred made many recordings with the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra and the conductor copied Fred's signature move in the last strain as if he were swinging a baseball bat! That was 100% a Fennell move and by the smile on his face I believe he knew that!! Imitation IS the sincerest form of flattery. Lastly as a former band director I made many of the alterations to the march - which are admittedly non-traditional - and performed it that way when I took my band to their annual performance assessment. Each adjudicator had to have a copy of my score with all of the markings, etc. - I also included a note to each that said something to the effect of (paraphrasing) 'Before you judge too harshly on my interpretation, you need to consider that it was taken from the man who made this arrangement' - and I included a copy of the program from the Eastman Wind Ensemble, along with Fred's autograph to me on the cover. Needless to say, it certainly helped - also helped knowing my adjudicators were also more "old school" as I was (although much younger at the time, I learned from some of the best of that era!) and would be adverse to such changes without any rationale behind them. One thing to say you copied an interpretation that Fennell might have done, totally another to have been able to back it up! Point being, this interpretation was probably the one they were most familiar with, having worked with Fennell for so many years and that is why they played it the way they did.