For a number of years the classical recording business has served as both artistic influence and, on occasion, conscience for the concert business, not least in the area of American repertory.
One has only to think of the Charles Ives boom of the mid-1970s, a plethora of performances partly fueled by U.S. Bicentennial fever but, more centrally, by the commercial and critical success of Leonard Bernstein`s recordings of various Ives orchestral works.
The sad fact is, however, that our leading conductors, soloists and symphony managers have not entirely freed themselves from a Eurocentrist mindset when it comes to putting together concert programs. The big recording companies are, of course, hardly immune to this syndrome, as witness the fact that DG`s recent release of a Claudio Abbado/Berlin Philharmonic performance brought to 47 the number of available CD recordings of the Brahms First Symphony.
But recordings, many of which are pitched to more sophisticated listening tastes than the vast majority of symphony concerts, can also strike a healthy blow for greater diversification, introducing fresh American voices into the musty musical mix of dead European composers that prevails in most of our concert halls.
And, who knows: By making themselves more receptive to the wider programming possibilities afforded by much of the American music that proliferates on recordings, the custodians of our musical culture could help to check stagnation at the box office while insuring the very survival of their institutions.
Since we began by mentioning Ives and Bernstein, perhaps they should be the composers with whom to launch this survey of recent releases on compact disc of American music by American artists.
Who would have imagined that Ives-the Connecticut Yankee modernist who almost singlehandedly freed American music from its fealty to European models- set his earliest songs to texts by famous German Romantic poets? Baritone Thomas Hampson offers 14 Ives settings of poems by Heine, Lenau, Eichendorff and others on an imaginatively planned disc devoted to other rarely performed songs by the Americans Edward Macdowell and Charles Tomlinson Griffes.
The Griffes songs, each an exquisite fusion of music and poetry, are the real treasures of this release. Ives` early efforts, for all their melodious charm, seem more than a little naive by comparison. But all 36 lieder are worth hearing and Hampson performs them splendidly, ably partnered by pianist Armen Guzelimian (Teldec 72168).
Among Bernstein`s final recordings was a collection of American compositions, including his Concerto for Orchestra (”Jubilee Games”), David Del Tredici`s ”Tattoo” and Ned Rorem`s Violin Concerto, taped at various concerts with the New York and Israel philharmonics (DG 429 231).
The four-movement Concerto for Orchestra actually was cobbled together from various occasional pieces written for the Israeli orchestra. Beginning with an aleatoric free-for-all and ending with a brassy benediction, the concerto is unified by the composer`s idiosyncratic use of number-symbology, Hebraic musical elements and the sheer chutzpah of his larger-than-life musical personality.
If neither the Bernstein nor Del Tredici works makes as immediate an impression as the lyrical Rorem concerto (intensely played by Gidon Kremer), that is not to deny the immense vitality of these composer-directed performances, which remind us that the lamented Lenny was a fervent champion of American works at the New York Philharmonic well before he became the darling of Vienna.
A thoughtful reminder of the staggering loss to American music created by the deaths of Bernstein and Copland in 1990 is an RCA Victor reissue,
”Leonard Bernstein: The Early Years,” containing examples of Lenny as both pianist (his classic 1947 account of Copland`s Piano Sonata and his own
”Seven Anniversaries”) and conductor (Bernstein`s ”On the Town” Dances and Copland`s ”Billy the Kid” Suite, recorded in 1945 and 1949). The brash elan of these readings emerges through the somewhat boxy sound of the 78-rpm originals (60915).
The former CBS Masterworks, for which label Copland (as conductor and pianist) taped virtually his complete musical output during the 1970s, has gathered its stereo recordings of Copland`s orchestral and ballet music in three well-filled, multidisc volumes (Sony Classical 47232, 46559, 47236).
Copland`s podium skills were at times severely challenged by the technical demands of his music, and several of these recordings have been surpassed by other interpreters, especially Bernstein. (The latter does, in fact, direct five of the works in the Sony omnibus.) But even if you already own the LP versions, these digitally remastered sets offer a convenient overview of the orchestral Copland; one can only hope the chamber, vocal, choral and operatic works will appear on CD before too long.
Copland, who died in 1990, was followed in death two years later by his distinguished contemporary, William Schuman. Schuman`s was an important and, indeed, emblematic voice in American music. Recent releases on RCA Victor, Delos and Koch Classics, each containing Schuman`s most popular piece, ”New England Triptych” (albeit with different couplings), remind us that the man`s sinewy, vital, optimistic style changed but little over a long and productive career as composer, educator and administrator.
Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony have recorded Schuman`s final symphony, No. 10 (subtitled ”American Muse”), on a disc that represents the composer`s credo on the indomitable spirit of this nation; included is the
”American Festival Overture” and the Schuman orchestration of Ives`
Variations on ”America” (RCA 61282). While the Third remains by far Schuman`s strongest symphony, ”American Muse” makes a fitting summation to an illustrious career, and this first recording will be self-recommending for the composer`s admirers.
Conductor Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony offer a rather more varied Schuman tribute on Delos 3115, an engaging collection that includes the Symphony for Strings (No. 5), the Martha Grahamesque choreographic poem,
”Judith,” and the Ives-Schuman ”America” variations. Delos`
performances and recording are excellent and the whole represents yet another notable entry in the Schwarz/Delos series.
If it`s the ”New England Triptych” and no other Schuman work you seek, Koch has yoked that William Billings-inspired work to the Symphony No. 1
(1941) by Bernard Herrmann, the composer perhaps best known for his scores to numerous Alfred Hitchcock films. Herrmann`s wartime opus shares a certain fondness for the Grand Gesture with the contemporaneous symphonies of Roy Harris, Copland and, yes, Schuman. Both pieces get sturdy performances from the Phoenix Symphony under the direction of Chicago-born James Sedares (7135). Less easily classifiable is the music of William Bolcom, who shuttles freely between serious and popular idioms and manages to absorb everything into his creative bloodstream. All ears in the music world will be on the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer three months hence when Lyric Opera presents the world premiere of his ”McTeague” and the Chicago Symphony performs his Fifth Symphony.
Meanwhile, listeners can get an accurate notion of his ingenious interweaving of multiple musical styles from an Argo release containing recent scores, all enjoyable: Violin Concerto, Fantasia Concertante for Viola and Cello, and Symphony No. 5. Soloist Sergiu Luca makes elegant sport of the concerto, which cleverly combines Coplandish pastoralism with the jazz-fiddle style of Joe Venuti. Fine readings by the American Composers Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies (Argo 433 077).
As Schwarz`s series devoted to the seven symphonies of Howard Hanson nears completion, Mercury continues to raid its vaults for conservative Americana as recorded in the late 1950s and `60s by Hanson with the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra.
The latest Mercury Living Presence reissue returns to the catalogue Colin McPhee`s gamelan-inspired toccata, ”Tabuh-Tabuhan,” Roger Sessions` ”Black Maskers” Suite and, best of all, Virgil Thomson`s folksy/sophisticated
”Symphony on a Hymn Tune” and ”The Feast of Love.” With a 60-minute-plus playing time and handsomely refurbished stereo sonics, this disc should please record buyers who are forever complaining that nobody writes tuneful, listenable music any more (434 310).
