Hands Across the Sea Sousa Marches
March 2008 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Hands Across the Sea is one of the most famous marches to have been written by John Philip Sousa. Produced in 1899, it was intended to be a sign of friendship from America to any country on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, but it has since been popularized to symbolize a handshake between the United States and the United Kingdom. If you search YouTube you will find more videos of it than the immensely popular The Stars and Stripes Forever. There’s even a highly successful video by the World Accordion Orchestra, which is a much better experience than you might think from merely reading the instrumentation.

The Band of the Grenadier Guards, tracing its roots back 300 years, has a long history of performing Sousa marches. The organization had an all-Sousa disc on Decca some years back and in 1995 updated that concert for Teldec. It is the latter disc that provides the soundtrack for this colorful DVD. It includes such famous pieces as the title tune, The Liberty Bell, The Stars and Stripes Forever, The Washington Post, and The Thunderer, alongside such unfamiliar gems as The Belle of Chicago, Daughters of Texas, A Century of Progress, and The White Plume.

As an audio-only affair, the Guards recording runs third or fourth place to discs led by Frederick Fennell or either Edwin or Richard Franko Goldman. The readings are crisp and precise and understandably a bit slower than our American performances, since they are played at actual march tempo. This restriction makes for a lack of nuance and robs the music of some of its fire. On the other hand, the band members play the notes impeccably and with spot-on intonation, and the balances between various instruments and sections of instruments are excellent.

The audio negatives become unimportant when coupled with the video. When one can actually see the band and the guards executing their precision marching, the tempos make complete sense. The program contrasts segments of formation marching and outdoor performance with indoor concert situations inside elegant Blenheim Palace, once the home of Sir Winston Churchill. Some marches accompany visual tours of guard memorabilia, and one features mixed live and still archival footage of Sousa and his band.

The sharply focused picture is very colorful, contrasting the greenery outside the palace with the bright-red uniforms of the guard, often adding in a bright blue sky. At times the detail is uncommonly fine; you can sense three-dimensional texture in the famous bear-skin hats worn outdoors, much to the dismay of animal-rights protesters.

The sound is clean and direct PCM stereo. The balances are excellent most of the time, though there’s occasionally a slight lack of bass. The bass drum, however, has good impact, and the upper-frequency instruments have a silvery sheen without being overly bright. There are absolutely no extras, but many might feel that with 26 of the best marches ever written they fully have their money’s worth.

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