Mozart: Le Nozze Di Figaro / Barenboim, Tomlinson, Rodgers, Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Performer: John Tomlinson, Phyllis Pancella, Joan Rodgers, Richard Brünner, Conductor: Daniel Barenboim, Orchestra/Ensemble: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin RIAS Chamber Chorus, "Barenboim continues to favors a forceful, big-scale reading with often deliberate speeds for the slower numbers, a musically accomplished, thought-through account of the crucial finales to Acts 2 and 4, lively treatment of the recitative, finely-honed playing of the wind, alert rhythms and an avoidance for the most part of appoggiaturas... John Tomlinson is much better suited by Figaro than he was by Alfonso, but still wants in tonal focus... but he does at all times create a lively personality, a force to be reckoned with... Sir Geraint Evans is even more individual in his characterization - listen to the recitative before his Act 4 aria - and has the more agile voice, helped by the fact that it tends more towards the baritonal." - Gramophone

Enjoyable and entertaining ... the strong personality of Locklair's music is projected successfully ...

This is, as the liner-notes suggest, a CD of attractive and colourful music. Though most of the works are very recent, Locklair writes in an idiom that is perfectly accessible to anyone who has even a quite limited knowledge of 20th century music. His influences are fairly easy to discern – not only Copland, but other more international voices such as Martin? and Shostakovich occasionally shine through. However these soon fade from the attention, as Locklair has his own strong stylistic personality.

The Symphony of Seasons is, naturally, in four movements, proceeding from a ceremonial opening ‘Autumn’ to a warm and expansive ‘Summer’, via the longest movement, ‘Winter’, and a sprightly ‘Spring’. Locklair uses some well-known melodies along the way, notably the Lutheran chorale Nun danket alle Gott, which is heard in ‘Autumn’, and the round Sumer is icumen in, which duly appears in the finale.

The most striking section for me is ‘Winter’, an extended slow movement cast in the form of a Chaconne, that is to say variants over a repeated harmonic sequence. Though I could probably have done without the wind machine - especially after the summer we’ve had in the UK - I nevertheless found this a powerfully atmospheric movement. Also striking is the restraint with which ‘Summer’ is treated; it begins in a magically hushed vein, with a fine, broad melody, and, though Sumer is icumen in brings life and dance rhythms into the music, it dies away in an atmosphere of mystery.

The earliest work on the disc is Lairs of Soundings, a three movement piece for soprano and strings dating from 1982. Movements 1 and 3 are settings of parts of poems by Ursula Le Guin, and are both fraught, nervous pieces. They are offset by a strikingly lovely slow central section, in which the voice is wordless, the ‘text’ being pure vowel sounds. Attractive music, though the work as a whole seems a little short – perhaps it needs one more movement. Janeanne Houston is the soloist, well able to deal with the very high tessitura, but slightly unsteady in tone and intonation here and there.

Phoenix and Again is a short, straightforward occasional piece, while In Memory – H.H.L. is an elegiac movement for string orchestra paying tribute to the composer’s mother. Like all the music on the disc, it is well crafted and carefully planned. To claim, however, as the disc’s conductor Kirk Trevor apparently has done, that this is a ‘worthy successor to the Barber Adagio’ is the sort of wild assertion that really does the piece no favours at all, and does call the conductor’s musical judgement somewhat into question.

The concluding item on this enjoyable and entertaining disc is the three movement Harp Concerto, delivered with great aplomb by Jacquelyn Bartlett. This is a charming work, with a beautiful central slow movement, Variants, in which the soloist often provides a soft yet sumptuous accompaniment to woodwind and string melodies. This underlined for me the impression that Locklair is most himself in his slow music, where he often achieves a rarefied atmosphere that is very affecting.

To be fair to Kirk Trevor - having taken him to task above! - he does a fine job of steering the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra through this inevitably unfamiliar music. They mostly play very well, with some excellent woodwind playing. The brass occasionally show the strain, particularly in more demanding parts of the Symphony, and the strings sound as if they could perhaps do with a couple more desks in each section. But these shortcomings are not serious, and the strong personality of Locklair’s music is projected successfully throughout.

-- Gwyn Parry-Jones, MusicWeb International

This is the third major-label monograph of diverse music of Michael Daugherty (b. 1954), the University of Michigan faculty member known for his engagement with pop-culture subject matter. The first, of his Superman-inspired Metropolis Symphony and other works, made a splash. Another brought us a series of sound-gags, including the bassoon concerto Dead Elvis. There’s also a release of his opera Jackie O and scattered works on numerous compilations, as well as a symphonic band version of UFO and other works on the Klavier label. This is his first Naxos release, part of the terrific “American Classics” series.

Philadelphia Stories, considered by the composer his Third Symphony, was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, which premiered it under David Zinman in 2001. The work is in three movements, as much a triptych of tone poems as an abstract symphony—an urban La mer. The titles of the movements indicate the gist: “Sundown on South Street,” “Tell-Tale Harp,” “Bells for Stokowski.” The piece is just under half-an-hour long, each of the first two movements being about seven-and-a-half minutes and the third about 14.

If you know anything of Daugherty’s music, much of what’s here won’t surprise you for the most part. Daugherty frequently draws on pop and kitsch music archetypes in building up evocative larger forms. I can’t pin down any specific paraphrases in the first movement, but the several different kinds of orchestral pop, jazz, and Latin jazz conjure the atmosphere of Philly’s South Street, a byway of the musical night life where Daugherty himself had performed jazz and experimental music. The movement is a fantasia for two solo harps and orchestra, the title referring to The Tell-Tale Heart, which Edgar Allan Poe wrote in Philadelphia. Daugherty likens the somewhat gas-lit mood of the movement to Poe’s lyric poetry. The big shadow to go along with Stokowski’s in the last movement is Bach’s, alluding of course to the conductor’s famous orchestral transcriptions of Bach’s music. Daugherty begins the movement with a solo violin theme (arguably in the style of Bach), which serves as a basis for wide-ranging variations, Daugherty writes, “in my own musical language.”

The second work, UFO (1999), is a five-movement concerto for percussion and orchestra, written for soloist Evelyn Glennie and the National Symphony and conducted at its premiere by Leonard Slatkin. The five movement titles are as evocative as those in Philadelphia Stories: “Traveling Music,” “Unidentified,” “Flying,” “???,” and “Objects”; each concentrates on different percussion instruments. There are a few neat moments, but from the subject matter one expects a more imaginative (Lachenmann-like? Messiaen-ish?) orchestral experience than one gets. Deft, but largely predictable—as in Philadelphia Stories. The latter, though, is a far more satisfying work; it suffers less from a desperation solely to entertain. (The symphonic-band instrumentation of this piece was created in 2000; it was commissioned by a consortium of university bands and recorded by Glennie and the University of North Texas Wind Symphony, Eugene Migliaro Corporon conducting.)

Daugherty is a good composer from the standpoint of his ability to get what he wants out of his materials, but it’s hard to put one’s finger on what his true voice (that “my own musical language” of the above quote) might be beneath the busy surface of style-dropping. It could be argued that style isn’t something that can be heard from moment to moment, necessarily—that the whole of the work, the choices the composer makes in his gleanings from others, his extramusical impetus, are the style. Daugherty definitely has a taste for particular kinds of borrowings.

The performances are excellent. Marin Alsop obviously knows the Colorado Orchestra well and leads them with confidence through this often tricky music; they seem like they’re having fun. Glennie is outstanding as usual as a performer, but once again, she’s playing a commissioned piece that remains a little flat. Still, this disc is all in all a good and inexpensive introduction to Daugherty’s work. This Naxos series is invaluable.

Robert Kirzinger, FANFARE

BAKER The Glass Bead Game. 1 Awaking the Winds. 2 Shadows: Four Dirge-Nocturnes. 3 The Mystic Trumpeter 4 • Leonard Slatkin, cond; 4 Hans Vonk, cond; Saint Louis SO • NAXOS 8.559642 (66:36) Live: St. Louis 1 1/21–24/1991; 2 5/14–16/1993; 3 5/18–20/1990; 4 4/16–18/1999


From 1991 to 1999 Claude Baker was the composer-in-residence to the Saint Louis Symphony, the fourth and last in a program in which he was preceded by Joseph Schwantner (1982–85), Joan Tower (1985–88), and Donald Erb (1988–91). Recorded souvenirs of the residencies of the first three were issued by Nonesuch and New World; neither Schwantner release made it to CD, but the Tower and Erb did and can still be purchased. Though arguably the most compelling artist of this distinguished quartet—please don’t send nasty notes—and certainly the one longest in residence, Baker was not so honored. A 1993 live recording of Shadows: Four Dirge-Nocturnes was included in the limited edition commemorative set, The Slatkin Years , but that is long out of print. (The Naxos disc opts for the 1990 premiere.) So this Naxos release of live recordings originally made for broadcast between 1990 and 1999, funded by Indiana University in Bloomington where Baker holds an endowed professorship, is a most welcome redress of an unfortunate oversight.


The Glass Bead Game (1982/83)—inspired, as is almost all of his music, by a literary work and quoting from the compositions of others as annotation—is quintessential Claude Baker and therefore a perfect work to open the program. Baker, inspired by Hermann Hesse’s novel of the same name, takes his thesis from the intellectual narcissism of Hesse’s Castalian scholars. Their obsession with analyzing the past, their fascination with games, trivial detail, cleverness, and systemic complexity, and their eventual stagnation and decline through failure to create anything new are all reflected in the musical program. Baker uses Hesse and the music to shine a light on 20th-century musical obsessions, using a brilliantly executed numerologically complex serial canon; a dream-like, period-correct performance of a Johann Schein courtly dance commented upon by modern atonality; and an amazing collage of six works by Dallapiccola, Schoenberg, Vaughan Williams, Shostakovich, Penderecki, and Liszt, given unity by their incorporation of the famous B-A-C-H motive. These six pieces are assimilated Castalian-syle into a final movement, which is both amazing in its virtuosity and sobering in its ultimate emptiness.


Shadows: Four Dirge-Nocturnes (1990) and The Mystic Trumpeter (1999) are grounded as well in literary sources. In Shadows , Baker explores four haiku, using characteristics of the form—syllable counts, binary construction, and motivic concision—as compositional elements. The verses and the music are dark, evoking death, the graveyard, and mourning in each of the seasons from spring through winter. Woven into the nocturnal work are gestures, fragments, and quotes from works by Mahler, Britten, and Stravinsky, ending touchingly with a quote from “In diesem Wetter” from Kindertotenlieder. The Mystic Trumpeter concerns itself with Walt Whitman, finding both literal and symbolic connection between the verse—the title poem and “The Dalliance of the Eagles”—and Ives’s The Unanswered Question , and works by Messiaen, George Rochberg, and medieval troubadour Guiraut de Bornelh. Awaking the Winds (1993) is the anomaly. It has no literary precursor, contains no borrowed music, and is “freely chromatic” rather than Baker’s usual combination of tonality and atonality. Unlike the other works that are heavily driven by the percussion section, this one eschews even timpani. It essentially is a pastorale, though the composer disavows any programmatic intent, with suggestions of wind and sounds of nature, a storm, and a quiet dénouement.


During the decade of these performances, Leonard Slatkin and the SLSO had a well-deserved reputation as promoters of new music, especially by native composers, and the orchestra was in superb shape, able to play anything that their composer might write for them. Vonk, who took over the podium in 1996, may not have taken to the idiom as naturally, but the orchestra still knew the way home and the Dutch maestro paces them most effectively. The execution of this bold, dramatic, and exceedingly challenging music is flawless, the moments of quiet and delicacy are sublimely poised, and even more to the advantage of the music, all is presented with absolute conviction. Recordings exist online of Indiana University ensembles playing this music—although The Mystic Trumpeter seems to have disappeared for now—but good as they are—and the fine Shadows is even conducted by Slatkin—none of the IU performances can match these in function or insight. The recordings themselves, the majority engineered by the late/lamented William Hoekstra, are demonstration class, and reveal little of the very quiet audiences. I was present for at least three of these concert series, so for me there could not be a better tribute to Claude Baker or to his years with the SLSO than the release of these recordings. They should serve admirably to introduce the work of the composer to those not so fortunate, as well.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames

The Danish String Quartet's love of traditional Scandinavian folk music is almost as well known as the Quartet's performances of the classical repertoire. The album "Wood Works," presents four favorite tunes from Nordic folk history, including a 400 year old fragment from Fano, also heard within a movie seen by over 50,000 viewings. - Dacapo, (translated from Danish)

Over the last decade the music of the Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra has become internationally admired, and this has led to prestigious commissions and performances around the world. Fandangos was heard at the BBC Proms in London and employs a harpsichord work attributed to Antonio Soler as a departure for a richly inventive orchestral fantasy. The dramatic Sinfonia No. 4 was described by ArtsNowNashville as 'a textbook example of how this composer breathes new life into old forms. The piece is basically a classic Germanic symphony imbued with Spanish sensibilities and reinvigorated with new harmonies and rhythms.' Robert Schumann is subtly evoked in Carnaval, five character pieces that explore mythical creatures, both menacing and serene.

T he Strauss family was one of music's greatest dynasties. In this glittering disc, we hear such classics as the Radetzky March of Johann Strauss I, and his son, Johann Strauss II's overture to Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron), one of the enduring masterpieces of the Viennese concert repertoire. The irresistibly exciting Unter Donner und Blitz (Thunder and Lightning) offers thunderous delight, whilst Ander schenen blauen Donau (On the Beautiful Blue Danube) is one of the most unforgettable melodies ever written. Strauss the Elder's second son, Josef, was an outstanding composer in his own right, as demonstrated by the frenzy of excitement that is the Jokey-Polka (Jockey-Polka). After positions as Chief Conductor of Prague State Opera and First Permanent Conductor of Leipzig Opera, Johannes Wildner was the General Music Director of the New Philharmonic Orchestra of Westphalia (Germany) for ten years from 1997. His years of experience as a member of the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra have given his conducting a distinctive stamp.

Not too many listeners are Dybbuk admirers, and even Bernstein's supporters find this music less interesting than much else that he wrote. The fact that the music resorts to some dodecaphonic and numerological compositional techniques isn't a point in its favor, though in actual sonority it's entirely characteristic of Bernstein, and at this late date it's easy to hear that his personality inhabits every bar. If there's a problem with the piece, it likely stems from the fact that the overall impression it makes is a bit glum, lacking in that special snap that makes his best work so memorable. Certainly the supernatural subject is a dark one, and it calls forth plenty of eerie, atmospheric scoring; but the actual musical material seems stretched thinly over the work's 45 minutes (48, if you're the composer). Bernstein recorded the complete work for Sony, but broke it up into a pair of suites for his DG remakes. I do prefer the original; the music is what it is, and over time it has grown on me--and might well do so for you too.


Fancy Free of course is delightful, and often recorded, but this performance holds its own with the best--and I frankly prefer Andrew Mogrelia to the composer in Dybbuk. He's just that much livelier, and the Nashville Symphony sounds as inside the idiom as the New York Philharmonic of several decades' past. This newcomer also is better recorded than Bernstein's performances either on Sony or DG, and the excellent version of "Hot Stuff" that opens Fancy Free also is a plus. If you're a Bernstein fan, you will certainly want this.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

G. COATES Symphonies: No. 1; 1 No. 7; 2 No. 14 3 ? Jorge Rotter, cond; 1 Siegerland O; 1 Olaf Henzold, cond; 2 Bavarian RSO; 2 Christoph Poppen, cond; 3 Munich CO; 3 Raymond Curfs (kd) 3 ? NAXOS 8.559289 (65:47)


First, this is Gloria Coates (b. 1938) not Eric. Second, we have a welcome addition to a still-too-small discography of one of the most original living American composers. I will confess this is my first encounter (far too late) with her music, but I have been primed by word of mouth, above all by former Fanfare critic Kyle Gann, who praises her lavishly in his American Music in the Twentieth Century. And the advance word has been confirmed by the music I?ve finally heard.


Coates is definitely a composer in the mold of the American ?ultramodernists? of the early 20th century. The listener will immediately sense an adventurous, uncompromising, cantankerous spirit in her work that is a descendant of such as Ives, Ruggles, Cowell, and Crawford. Her most distinguishing technique is that of the string glissando, which in lesser hands can be a cheap symbol of modernist instability, and a passport to aural seasickness. Not here. Coates is careful to place her sliding tones at the service of larger processes: canons in particular, or ?additive/subtractive? lines that expand and contract the range of the glissando over time and in perceptible patterns. She?s a wonderfully paradoxical composer because, on the one hand, the music is highly experimental in its surface technique, but on the other hand, classical in its attention to form and development within the symphonic argument. She?s a very conceptual composer, as both the titles of movements (Symphony No. 7?s movements are ?The Whirligig of Time,? ?The Glass of Time,? and ?Corridors of Time?) and her attachment to strict processes, nowadays called algorithms, may suggest. But no matter how idealistic the music, it always carries a visceral impact, or in good old American terms, a real wallop.


The three works on this program nicely cover the composer?s entire symphonic cycle (up to this point), dipping into the start, the middle, and end. Symphony No. 1 (1972?73) is her best-known work, also referred to as ?Music on Open Strings.? The work begins with an alternate pentatonic tuning of the instruments, and in the third movement incorporates the scordatura (retuning) of the strings back to the conventional tuning into the real-time performance fabric. Not all the sounds are just the five pitches, though, as Coates inserts all sorts of glissandos that enrich the texture, even if they don?t establish other firm pitch centers. It?s a highly original work, and a bracing combination of both minimalist and modernist practices.


The Symphony No. 7 (1990; a tribute to ?Those who brought down the Wall in PEACE,? though there is little I hear that?s programmatic in the actual music) is the most European sounding of the three works: not a surprise, as the composer has lived her mature artistic life in Germany, another marker of her ?outsider? status. It?s highly abstract in its materials, and verges on being the work whose glissandos wear out their welcome. But just when I started feeling the music was becoming predictable (in the first and third movements), it marshals its forces to create overwhelming climaxes that simultaneously sound surprising yet natural. I don?t know exactly what the technique is, but I suspect Coates has deep processes at work that lead to a culmination one desires but can?t easily predict. The relentless growth and impact of the piece, a storm in sound, is similar to Xenakis?s Jonchaies for orchestra, though I don?t claim it?s quite as great a work.


The final work, Symphony No. 14 (2001?02, ?Symphony in Microtones?), is by far the most American-sounding piece, for at least two obvious reasons. First, the piece (for strings and timpani?only the Seventh uses full orchestra on this collection) divides the string orchestra into two halves, tuned a quarter tone apart. Some of the music is so dense one doesn?t really perceive the differences, but in cases of the hymn quotation discussed below, it can be striking. The effect is the most Ivesian of this set and, in particular, I think of the composer of the Robert Browning Overture as an antecedent here.


Second, the first two movements quote pieces by Supply Belcher (a late 18th-century Maine hymnodist) and William Billings, the Boston Revolutionary-period composer who was himself an aesthetic revolutionary of the first order. The Billings choice is particularly apt, as it is ?Jargon,? his completely atonal (though better stated, it could be called ?non-functional,? as all the intervals are consonant, but they don?t make up traditional tonal chords) choral work, a message from another universe to the 18th century. In both movements, the antique sources emerge from Coates?s swirling textures like apparitions, an effect that is magical and unnerving. In the Billings movement, after appearing, the source is then stated with the quarter-tone difference, which feels like a true enrichment rather than a mere distortion.


In short, this is remarkable music. At times it can seem too crude and obvious, spurning standards of polish and taste, and then at the next moment it blindsides you with the power of its vision, a balanced match of manner and substance, form and content, style and idea. And on top of it all, if the booklet?s cover is any guide, Coates is a talented visual artist as well, in the tradition of Ruggles.


The sonic standards of the disc are variable: Symphony No. 1 is a recording from 1980, with more surface noise than we?re now accustomed to, and No. 7 comes from a concert recording of the world premiere. Only No. 14 has the clarity and crispness listeners have come to expect. At the same time, this doesn?t bother me, as none of the earlier sonic flaws are too distracting, and the music overcomes any such obstacle on its innate strengths. There is one serious competitor to this disc, cpo 999 392, which includes Nos. 1 and 7, substituting No. 4 for No. 14. I have not heard it, but I note from its online data that No. 1 is also a live recording from the same year as the Naxos (1980), and No. 7 was recorded in 1991, so I suspect at the very least there are similar sonic issues involved. I have a hunch that, based on repertoire, the Naxos disc will be preferable as an introduction, providing a broad sweep of the composer?s career. But based on what I?ve heard, I also suspect if you are hooked on Coates, you?ll probably need to get the cpo eventually.


This may well reappear on my 2006 Want List.


FANFARE: Robert Carl

PERRY Jamestown Concerto. SCHUMAN A Song of Orpheus. THOMSON Cello Concerto • Yehuda Hanani (vc); William Eddins, cond; RTÉ Natl SO • NAXOS 8.559344 (72:09)

And here is another side of William Perry. The Jamestown Concerto (2006) begins with a beautiful solo cello segment that sits halfway between solo cadenza and folkish musing, described as a “cello overture” in Douglas Bruce’s notes. Written to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first permanent colony in America in Jamestown, Virginia (1607), it is a poignant work that integrates Perry’s trademark filmic qualities into a concert framework. It also includes musical material derived from a madrigal published in 1501 by John Milton (father of the poet). There is a detailed program (trumpets in the second movement, “Settlement Along the River,” announce the arrival of Captain John Smith to quell an uprising, for example), but it is one that strikes me as optional. Yehuda Hanani is a most eloquent soloist. My colleague Lynn René Bayley found this work rather wanting in her review ( Fanfare 32:3). I find the work’s almost childlike sense of wonder and its clear impression of ongoing narrative, beautifully scored, rather compelling. The playful “Pocahontas in London” fourth movement is enchanting; the fifth bustles while faithfully evoking time and place. Skillful, eminently musical, and poignant pretty much sum up this piece.

Good to see William Schuman’s music here, too. The rest of the music will get less of a say on the grounds that it appears in the context of an article on Perry, but it is good to hear Schuman’s A Song of Orpheus (premiered 1962), especially prefaced by a reading (by Jane Alexander) of Shakespeare’s “Orpheus with his Lute.” I agree with Bayley on every count here (except that I actually do like the idea of the reading of the poem). Superbly atmospheric music, yet at the same time sophisticated, especially in harmonic terms. Finally, Virgil Thomson’s Cello Concerto, a remarkably strong and powerful work, is given a proud and muscular account here by Hanani (which is not to underplay Hanani’s deftness in the finale).

The placing of Perry here is important. He justly takes his place with two giants of American music.

FANFARE: Colin Clarke

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PERRY Jamestown Concerto. SCHUMAN A Song of Orpheus. 1 THOMSON Cello Concerto • Yehuda Hanani (vc); William Eddins, cond; Jane Alexander (spkr); 1 RTÉ Natl SO • NAXOS 8.559344 (72:10 Text and Translation)

These three works, tied by their American heritage and syntax, though not entirely by subject matter—the Schuman is, after all, based on verses by Shakespeare—are given intelligent, sensitive, highly musical performances by renowned cellist Yehuda Hanani, conductor Eddins, and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. The only things they really lack are a more clearly focused sound and a bit more excitement.

William Perry’s concerto is the newest, written in 2006 and premiered in January 2007 by Hanani with the Musica Nova Orchestra in Scottsdale, Arizona. It is also, alas, the weakest. There are some splendid moments in all five movements, depicting the embarkation of the Virginia Company from London in 1606, settlements along the James River (including the introduction of Pocahontas), harsh winters of the colony, Pocahontas in London, and Jamestown 400 years later on; yet in each of these movements the music either began or deteriorated in interest for me, evidencing a style I would charitably describe as populist tonal banality. I don’t know if Perry purposely chose this route or if inspiration failed to connect the more imaginative sequences of his work (the third movement, the opening of the first, and the closing pages of the second), but for all its workmanlike qualities I felt it failed to gel.

Also, perhaps, the populist feel of this concerto was too much in contrast to the more serious and imaginative Song of Orpheus by Schuman. I’d almost forgotten what a truly splendid composer he was! None of this music is unattractive, yet none of it can be called easy listening. Not a note or phrase seems banal, prolonged, or unnecessary. Though perhaps more carefully crafted than written in a flash of insight, this concerto was nevertheless finished in only 11 months, premiered by the excellent American cellist Leonard Rose in 1962. The music is very close in concept to Berlioz’s longer and more familiar Harold in Italy , employing long stretches where the orchestra takes the lead and the cello amiably adds its commentary. Schuman wanted Shakespeare’s poem to be either printed in the concert program or recited from the stage. Of course, the brief text is included in the liner notes, but Naxos felt a need to hire actress Jane Alexander to recite the poem anyway. It’s a nice touch but, to me, an unnecessary extravagance.

I found Thomson’s Concerto (sometimes subtitled “Rider on the Plains”) to be perhaps the crown jewel of this collection. Quite in contrast to both the populist (but not popular ) style of his film scores, which I feel are the finest ever written by an American, or the rhythmically dense, polyphonic style of his operas, the concerto strode a peculiar middle ground. Charming if not-quite-catchy melodies based on hymns, circle game tunes, and even a snippet from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 6 were seamlessly woven into a rich tapestry. The cello definitely takes center stage here, with some of the most extraordinary and complex music Thomson ever wrote. At one point he even sends it flying up into the violin range, much like Chopin’s Introduction and Polonaise for cello but for a much longer period of time. Hanani, great virtuoso that he is, handles this with astounding aplomb if not quite the firm control of pitch that Emanuel Feuermann displayed in his Victor recording of the Chopin piece. But how many cellists are Feuermann? Answer: one. Feuermann! (It may also be of interest to note that, in this Concerto, Hanani is playing the same instrument that Paul Olefsky, principal cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, used in the 1950 premiere. Emmanuel Feldman also does a splendid job with this Concerto on the Albany label, but the more interesting pairing of the Schuman—not available elsewhere—makes this, for me, a more arresting disc.

This is certainly a splendid release, and should by no means be passed up, despite my few disappointments regarding sound and the Perry concerto.

FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

The competition is full-priced, from Nonesuch, and the formidable Glass-specialist and collaborator Dennis Russell Davies. On sonic grounds, I’d prefer this new Naxos disc of two symphonies from the mid 1990s. Davies is irreproachable as a Glass conductor, but in the case of these works, I find the Nonesuch recordings a touch claustrophobic, with much of the air sucked out of the acoustic. The older Glass/Naxos disc was even more successful in this regard (the Violin Concerto on 8.554568) but this is pretty good sound, captured by Tim Handley in the Concert Hall, Lighthouse, by the busy harbor at Poole in Dorset, England. The bustling, maritime setting seems to infect the music-making, especially for the rousing finale of the Second Symphony, like an Olympic yacht-race through a choppy sea on a bright, bracing morning. American symphonies used to stumble at the finale obstacle (so did symphonies everywhere) but through patient application of his familiar style, and his patented modal, orchestral dynamism, Glass whizzes around the course with no faults or penalties. This should make converts of anyone who enjoys symphonies from Bax to Bernstein.

Elsewhere, the dark and brooding moods are never overplayed or undersold by Marin Alsop. This isn’t the world’s most virtuosic band, but they rarely, and only very slightly sound strained by Glass’s high-lying violin lines. More performances from the big-name orchestras would bring a more expressive, forthright performing tradition, and maybe a faster finale for the Third. Glass’s Indian roots are often on display (there’s an Eastern cut to his thematic jib, here), but expressive results are fruitful. There are some reminders of other symphonists. In the Second it sometimes seems Alan Hovhaness, Lou Harrison, and Bill Schuman have met up for a drink with Sibelius, who is playing the Widor Toccata over there in the corner. Glass’s individual symphonism works, though, in this 43-minute piece, thanks to the skillful manipulation of orchestral contrasts as a structural device, a legacy, maybe, of his film-score experience. The Third Symphony is closer to the Glass mainstream, in four short movements for strings alone. Here, Alsop’s patient approach brings out the meaning in the music, away from the talk of polyrhythm and process. There’s fear, anxiety, and dismay (the world) behind some of those sunny repetitions, and physicality in the dance rhythms. Well-caught pizzicatos in the second movement, too, and an expressive solo display from the violin in the edgy, pulsating third section, which is a major success in this tense, sensual reading.

I wholeheartedly recommend this release (the first of a cycle, I trust), and again salute Philip Glass for doing it his way. The music deserves the widest exposure and popularity, and it deepens with acquaintance. This Naxos CD transformed my opinion of these works.

Paul Ingram, FANFARE

Philip Glass' symphonies are unique among the composer's output for their relative harmonic and thematic complexity. Listeners put off by Glass' endlessly repeated arpeggios will be relieved to find scant evidence of them in these works. Instead, like his opera Beauty and the Beast, Glass spins long melodic lines that go through many harmonic permutations before they are inevitably repeated. Thus, Symphony No. 2's first movement creates an air of expectation, something that Glass maintains through shifting instrumental timbres and stimulating dynamic contrast as the movement builds, Bolero-like, to a grand climax. After the soothing, somewhat meditative sonic environment of the slow movement, the finale breaks in with its agitated dance rhythms. This movement has the least harmonic variety of the three, and listeners unsympathetic to Glass' method may experience repetition fatigue.


Symphony No. 3 is almost radical in its use of traditional forms, including chaconne and rondo. Glass replaces the expansiveness of the earlier work with a highly concentrated thematic process that packs substantially more musical ideas into only slightly more than half the former symphony's duration. The second movement is particularly interesting, with its compound meters and hints of Bartók. Marin Alsop brings her long familiarity with the composer's music to her convincing performances of both works, although she faces strong competition in the No. 3 from Glass specialist Dennis Russell Davies, who leads a slightly more compelling rendition with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. For its part, the Bournemouth Symphony plays keenly, maintaining enthusiasm and rhythmic exactitude even in the more repetitious passages. Naxos' warm and spacious recording presents the music with a compelling impact. [12/03/2004]
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

American music is culturally diverse and exciting, mirroring all the best America has to offer. The last two centuries have seen an extraordinary flowering of musical life in the United States. In recognition of the many gifted American men and women of music, Naxos is pleased to present the American Classic Series.

When complete, this series will consist of over 200 titles, exploring the full spectrum of American concert music. All the familiar names are there: Copland, Ives, Grofé, Barber, and Sousa but so are many others such as: Bennett, Dédé, Foote, McKay, and Siegmeister all of whom have contributed to the rich musical tapestry that is American.

All of us at Naxos invite you to journey with us as we set out to discover America.


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