Virgil Thomson

Ken Thomson, a staple of New York City's contemporary music and jazz communities, is widely regarded for his ability to blend a rich variety of influences and styles into his own musical language while maintaining a voice unmistakably his own. Embracing the combination of complexity in harmony, rhythm, and form while adding a punk-rock aesthetic, Thomson stands alone in his unique corner of today's multifaceted musical world. As a composer, he has been commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Bang on a Can, the True/False Film Festival, Doug Perkins, Mariel Roberts, and others, and has received awards from New Music USA, ASCAP and Meet the Composer. This newest Sextet recording features ambitious, rhythmically incisive music that flows seamlessly between elaborate contrapuntal textures, edge of your seat unison passages, and blistering improvisations from a first rate band of colleagues.

Ken Thomson's Restless features vituoso cellist Ashley Bathgate and the emerging Brooklyn-based pianist Karl Larson. This release is the follow-up to Thomson's Thaw, which was released on Cataloupe Music in 2013. Restless, in four movements for cello and piano, and Me Vs., in three movements for solo piano, are two of Thomson's most substantial chamber works. While their form and instrumentation are a clear nod to traditional idioms, Thomson's signature blend of jazz, punk and modern art music still simmers at the surface. Avant-garde influences peek through the opening strains of "Forge" and the long, tense silences of "Turn of Phrase", while the dark, almost brooding tone of "Remain Untold" suggests the sonic cataclysm to come. Throughout Restless, these sometimes sudden shifts in mood and emotion suggest a world in turmoil. Thomson's music is notoriously difficult and consistently demands the height of virtuosity and technical precision from each performer. Bathgate and Larson deftly navigate Thomson's lengthy passages while steadily building the tension and density - in the end pushing the large-scale form to dramatic climaxes.

Synthetic Waltzes (1925) is a charming legacy of those years. A stylized society waltz, it is full of subtle misbehavior, such as at the opening and conclusion, where Thomson creates the impression of two waltz tempos heard simultaneously. Other works of this period, especially his Gertrude Stein song settings, display a serious whimsy that time has not tarnished. A third opera, Lord Byron, occupied much of there making 1960s. From the later 1970s, Thomson's production tapered off, except in an area that fascinated him throughout his career, the musical "Portraits" of his friends and acquaintances. Despite increasing health problems, he composed sporadically until shortly before his death on 30th September, 1989.

Everbest Music presents a reissue of two classic Virgil Thomson albums: Portraits and Self-Portraits and Mostly About Love. Performed by pianist and New York Times chief classical critic Anthony Tommasini, these out-of-print gems are now available as Portraits, Self-Portraits and Songs in a 2-CD set, digital download, and streaming formats. Previously released on Northeastern Records, these definitive recordings feature 22 of Thomson’s chamber and vocal works, showcasing his signature wit and shrewd musical style.

Virgil Thomson was not the first to compose musical portraits, but his are singular in that they were drawn from life. Gertrude Stein did this in literature and Thomson, ever her disciple, aspired to do so in music; the “model” would sit for their portrait, and the score page would become a canvas. These discs feature 70 of the 110 portraits for solo piano–representing the largest collection of these piano portraits ever recorded by one artist–brought to life by Craig Rutenberg, distinguished pianist, friend, and colleague of Mr. Thomson.

Pare Lorentz's The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937) are landmark American documentary films. Aesthetically, they break new ground in seamlessly marrying pictorial imagery, symphonic music, and poetic free verse, all realized with supreme artistry. Ideologically, they indelibly encapsulate the strivings of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.

The first film created by the United States Government for commercial release and distribution, The Plow was also – in the words of the film-music historian Neil Lerner – "the most widely publicized attempt by the federal government to communicate to its entire citizenry through a motion picture." It became the first film to be placed in Congressional archives and, following the wishes of FDR, would have become the first film screened at a joint session of Congress had the capitol chambers been equipped to show a sound film.

Virgil Thomson's scores for both films – here recorded in their entirety for the first time since Alexander Smallens conducted the soundtracks – are among the most famous ever composed for the movies. Aaron Copland praised the music for The Plow for its "frankness and openness of feeling," calling it "fresher, more simple, and more personal" than the Hollywood norm. He called the music for The River "a lesson in how to treat Americana."

The Plow that Broke the Plains was denounced (accurately) as New Deal propaganda. Sensing competition, Hollywood barred The Plow from its distribution system. Billed "The Picture They Dared Us to Show!" it opened at New York's Rialto Theatre and was cheered nightly. Public demand prevailed: eventually, over 3,000 theaters (out of 14,000 commercial cinemas nationally) screened The Plow to enthusiastic reviews. The Baltimore Sun found "more serious drama in this truthful record of the soil than in all the 'Covered Wagons' and 'Big Trails' produced by the commercial cinema."

Voted the best documentary at the 1938 Venice Film Festival (beating Leni Riefenstahl's Olympiad), The River was an overwhelming critical and commercial success. Paramount Pictures accepted it for national distribution. Lorentz's script, a Whitmanesque poem called by James Joyce "the most beautiful prose that I have heard in ten years," was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

The rationale for the present CD is obvious: the original thirties' soundtracks, gritty and opaque, do not do justice to Thomson's scores; more recently, this music has only been performed and recorded in the form of suites culled by Thomson, with many pages omitted.

REVIEW:

The current offering by James Sedares and the New Zealand Symphony is the best [Thomson recording] yet, with a big, clear sound and some virtuoso work from several sections, for example, the brass. As a bonus, the New Zealanders include Pilgrims and Pioneers, here recorded for the first time. (Thomson wrote this in 1964 for John Houseman's Journey to America, a one-reel film that was shown four times an hour in the U.S. Pavilion at the New York World's Fair.) Finally, this recording's fine liner notes by Marina and Victor Ledin include Thomson's own program notes from the first performances of these works.

-- American Music (Michael Meackna) Fall 2000

Sedares's generally fine performance with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra shows why the Symphony on a Hymn Tune has enjoyed the most popularity of Thomson's works...the Allegretto's rhythms are pointed incisively and with great flair, and Sedares builds the finale quite successfully with ardor and warmth, the bizarre repeated hammer chords of the coda aptly unsettling.

It's a grand idea to offer all three of Virgil Thomson's symphonies on one disc - at budget price no less-so obvious one wonders why no one has done it before...the playing of the New Zealand symphony is most impressive throughout, and the recorded sound is first-class. This disc neatly plugs a gap in the Thomson discography. Highly recommended.

-- Fanfare (Lawrence A. Johnson)