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George Crumb piano music

Edward Pearsall
Tempo / Volume 58 / Issue 230 / October 2004, pp 78 - 79
DOI: 10.1017/S0040298204240335, Published online: 01 October 2004

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0040298204240335

How to cite this article:
Edward Pearsall (2004). George Crumb piano music. Tempo, 58, pp 78-79 doi:10.1017/
S0040298204240335
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76 Tempo 58 (230) 7690

2004 Cambridge University Press

DOI: 10.1017/S0040298204000336 Printed in the United Kingdom

ELLIOTT CARTER: What Next? Valdine Anderson,

Sarah Leonard, Hilary Summers, William Joyner, Dean

Elzinga, Emanuel Hoogeveen, Netherlands Radio
Symphony Orchestra c. by Peter Etvs. ECM New
Series 1817

I have to declare two interests before writing

about What Next? namely that I know both the
composer and the librettist. In fact I first met
Elliott Carter in 2000 at the operas US premire,
through an introduction by its librettist, Paul
Griffiths the beginning of a relationship which
led to the composition of Dialogues for piano and
chamber orchestra some years later.
What Next? is a short opera (40 minutes in this
performance), depicting the aftermath of a carcrash inspired by Jacques Tatis film Trafic. The
characters are clearly defined, although how they
interrelate is not, and they spend the opera showing
themselves to us in various brief monologues while
at the same time trying to discover what exactly has
happened, who the others are, and what their relationships are to one another. There is one act, one
dramatic flow: the libretto creates solos, duets and
ensembles that melt in and out of this flow entirely
unrestricted, in a manner virtually identical to
Carters standard compositional practice, on one
level at least. The extraordinary aptness of the
libretto to Carters music is of course due to
Griffithss remarkable skill as a writer, but is also nodoubt the result of the unusually close
collaboration which they went through over the
libretto, described movingly in the excerpts from
Griffithss diary printed in the booklet.
In his note for the piece (also reproduced in the
booklet) Carter says that the librettist invented
quite sharply defined characters so necessary for a
work that has its only real event happen as the curtain rises. But this is only half the truth, as the
opera also ends with a cluster of significant events,
producing an ending which is a real ending within
the story, but also open, like the ending of Cos, as
Griffiths puts it in his diary. A group of mute Road
Workers enters some three-quarters of the way
through the opera, but the characters attempts to
make contact with them all fail: a situation which
makes the suspicion that all the sung characters
are in fact dead seem all the more plausible.
Whats more, simultaneous to this new development, two characters apparently begin to realize,

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or accept, that they were on the way to their wedding when the accident happened. And following
the only moment when they speak as a couple,
however briefly
Harry or Larry: Rose fails to understand why you busy
yourselves with
Rose: My possible husband-to-be asks you to
stop what youre doing

Kid asks How was it for only that moment you

were able to agree?. This brief moment of personal connexion is just as significant a gesture as
the entrance and simultaneous isolation of the
Road Workers, and contributes to a closing dramatic cadence. However imperfect this dramatic
cadence might be, however open and unstable the
penultimate episode (Uproar) is, and however
striving the music of the closing minutes is, this
opera does not simply float off into the ether as
might appear to be the case on first acquaintance.
It is a poignant and powerful ending.
The vocal writing throughout is classic Carter:
long-breathed, supple and characterful. The orchestral writing is quite remarkably beautiful
throughout: unpredictable and complex, while at
the same time noble and humane. The performance (recorded live) brings out these qualities, on the
whole. Particular mention must be made of Valdine
Anderson as Rose, Hilary Summers as Stella, and
William Joyner as Zen (the latter two singers created these roles and have sung them in virtually every
performance since). The only weakness in the cast
recorded here is the small boy-alto part, Kid, but that
may partly be down to the strangely muffled and
unclear recording quality dished out to him and him
alone. (The rest of the recorded balance is rather
resonant but serviceable.)
The above-mentioned US premire performance of What Next? (at Carnegie Hall, with the
Chicago SO under Barenboim) was a semi-staged
concert performance, as have been all performances since the (fully staged) world premire in
Berlin. It has frequently been remarked that What
Next? works well in this format, perhaps even better than fully staged. The same could be said for
the CD format: the opera doesnt lose as much
power as many other operas do from having no
visuals aside from those in the minds eye.

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Nicolas Hodges

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HENZE: Scorribanda Sinfonica sopra la Tomba di una

Maratona; Antifone; Piano Concerto No.11. Christopher

Tainton
(pno),
Norddeutschen
Rundfunk
Sinfonieorchester c. Peter Ruzicka. Wergo 6657 2

In the booklet to Wergos latest Henze release,

Peter Ruzicka translates Scorribanda Sinfonica
(2001) as something like symphonic bandits
raid (the German term he uses is sinfonischer
Raubzug). The whole title could be rendered
Symphonic Mugging on the Death of a
Marathon Dancer, implying since the commission for the work arose from an original request to
update his 19556 ballet Maratona di Danza, which
Henze wrote for a production by Luchino
Visconti that Scorribanda is a reworking of the
older score for the 21st century. Up to a point there
is a certain amount of truth in this, although the
originals interplay of a raucous (intentionally
poorly played), onstage jazz band and the slicker,
more expressive orchestra is nowhere in evidence.
Instead, we have here a symphonic reworking of
the older score, but from a new perspective: that of
the composer looking back across the decades to
the time and place where the ballet was written, as
if using the music as a lens with which to examine
and illuminate the memory. In idiom, Scorribanda
is clearly a product of Henzes latest style; while
the old fingerprints are there, such as scurrying
Stravinskyan string figures and Hartmannesque
brass and percussion, so are the more integrated
harmonic landscapes of his music from the
Seventh Symphony on.
Scorribanda could perhaps be described as a
palimpsest of the earlier ballet, the music in its
new guise fulfilling an altogether different expressive purpose. As such it forms part of an
important trend in Henzes music over the past
decade and a half, which has seen the revision and
reworking of a surprisingly large swathe of his
earlier music, from the ballet music based on
Dostoyevskys The Idiot, to the Sixth Symphony
and several operas. Antifone (1960), however,
seems to have escaped re-treatment: it is presented
here in its original form for 11 solo strings, winds
and percussion. Written for and dedicated to
Herbert von Karajan (who liked the piece so well
he waited nearly two years to premire it), it is in
many ways one of Henzes most extreme scores.
Whereas much of his music in the 1950s had concerned itself with the fusion of Stravinskyan
rhythms and Schoenbergian harmonies into a
bold, new, German music, Antifone seemed to
look exclusively to Webern and post-Webernian
serialism for its direction. Here, the dynamics and
rhythms as well as pitch are sequentially organ-

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ized, creating a sound world of unusual spareness.

Indeed, Henze here sounds probably least like
himself than in almost any other work of his that I
know. The result is intensely brittle, rather artificial (not least in its division into the four
movements of the classical symphony, unconvincing structurally), but sonically fascinating, like the
skeleton of a concerto for orchestra.
The concerto is possibly the one form Henze
has cultivated more assiduously than any other
throughout his career. Leaving Antifone aside, he
has penned no concertos for orchestra but there
are four for piano (if one includes the 1946
Concerto da camera and Tristan of a quarter-century later) plus a lively Stravinskyan Concertino;
three for violin, two for cello (Ode to the West Wind
and the delightful Liebeslieder), plus others for
oboe with harp, for clarinet, guitar, viola, doublebass and of course the nonet of sacred concertos
for piano, trumpet and small orchestra that make
up his Requiem. The First Piano Concerto followed
only four years after the early Concerto da camera,
but by this time Henze had experienced
Schoenbergs Piano Concerto; the impact of that
works application of dodecaphony is plain. Yet
this is not as extremely expressionist or serial an
utterance as Antifone. For one thing, the young
composer was still inexperienced as a 12-note creator and feeling his way in unfamiliar territory.
Secondly, his paying job was as a composer and
conductor of ballets, and something of their grace
and danceability is audible throughout the score.
Indeed, the slow central movement which comprises over half the duration of the concerto is
entitled Pas de deux and is one of Henzes loveliest
inspirations.
The performances are well-prepared and virtuosically played, although the orchestral image
given by the recording is at times a little twodimensional, particularly in Antifone, despite the
nicely achieved and well-balanced separation
between the different instrumental groups. The
conductor Peter Ruzicka is probably best known
in Britain as a composer (Wergo 6518 2 is devoted
entirely to his works and several others have
appeared on disc from various companies) as well
as an advocate of the music of the Swede, Allan
Pettersson. However, Ruzicka was a pupil of
Henze for a time and has audibly maintained a
working knowledge of his erstwhile teachers
music over the years. (His interviewing of Henze
stands as the booklet note.) Ruzickas interpretations emphasize the dichotomies in Henzes style
as much as the syntheses, giving the music an
unusually vital edginess. The way he steers a
course through the bold textures of Scorribanda is
impressive, as is the clarity of ensemble in

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Antifone. The account of the First Concerto is likewise exemplary, although coming after the more
advanced manners of its later companion pieces it
seems stylistically at odds with them. It might
have been more satisfying to place the Concerto
second and conclude with Antifone (since
Scorribanda makes such a good opener) or another
Henze work Heliogabalus Imperator, perhaps, or
the more recent Fraternit? There would have
been room the whole disc runs for less than 51
minutes.
Guy Rickards

KLETZKI: Symphony No. 3, In Memoriam; Concertino

for Flute and Orchestra. Sharon Bezaly (fl), Norrkping

Symphony Orchestra c. Thomas Sanderling. BIS CD1399.

Paul Kletzki (19001973) is today remembered as a

conductor, mainly for his recordings of Beethoven
and Mahler with the Philharmonia in the 1950s.
His work as a composer had nearly disappeared
completely until his widow at last opened a trunk
containing his scores, all of which were written
prior to 1942. (Kletzki himself had not dared to
open it since it was returned to him after the war.)
Hardly any of Kletzkis music was performed in his
lifetime and he effectively disowned it, believing it
lost: he did nothing to revive it despite a series of
distinguished posts as music director on both sides
of the Atlantic in the post-war years. His output
was modest but of considerable substance, as this
CD the first in a series reveals. Among various
other works there are three symphonies and concertos for piano, violin and flute. The conductor
Thomas Sanderling has told me that Kletzki was so
deeply affected by the war, the Holocaust and its
impact on Jewish art that he lost all heart for composition. His mother, father and sister were
murdered by the Nazis. Although in the 1920s and
30s he was a favourite of Wilhelm Frtwngler,
Kletzki had already fled three times by the time his
Symphony No. 3 was completed in October 1939.
It is, as Sanderling says, very much in the
Mahler/Strauss tradition of music as a personal
statement of expression rather than a painting or
creative art for arts sake.
Kletzkis style, as shown immediately in the
arresting opening of the 45-minute-long
Symphony, is in line with other mid-European
20th-century composers such as Krenek and
Hindemith, Karol Rathaus, his fellow Pole and
near contemporary Alexandre Tansman, and
maybe even the Honegger (of Di Tre Re). In some

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ways too, in my view, the music anticipates a pulsating American idiom associated most closely
with William Schuman and Peter Mennin. But
Kletzkis technique is by any measure astonishing
and is extremely advanced, the first movements
sonata form marked by dense and powerful harmonies, complex counterpoint and brilliantly
conceived orchestration. Sanderling says that the
work was extremely demanding for the
Norrkping orchestra, especially the brass with
many prolonged, intensive episodes affording little respite and requiring long and exact
preparation by every performer. The works overall tragic aspect and its subtitle In memoriam seem
to serve as a metaphor of the disorder, chaos and
tragedy about to descend on the whole continent,
but there is nothing disorderly or chaotic about its
own structure. The second movement is a long
elegy of tortured chromaticism which gradually
escalates into a furious cri de coeur. Like the other
movements the scherzo, described by the (very
explicit and well researched) sleeve-notes as a
nine-part rondo, is as sharply focussed as nine telescopes turned on the same constellation. Indeed,
everything always remains in focus whether inside
out, upside down or back to front, so clear is
Kletzkis vision of the music.
The relatively brief (16-minute) Flute
Concertino (1940) is rather lighter in texture than
the Symphony and the mood consequently less
weighty and more transparent, but the formidable
technique once again prevails. There can only be
the most enthusiastic of welcomes for these very
remarkable discoveries, together with gratitude
that such a brilliant talent has lost none of its
sheen despite six decades of slumber.
Bret Johnson

GEORGE CRUMB: The Complete Piano Music.

Makrokosmos 1; Makrokosmos 2; Five Pieces for Piano;

Gnomic Variations; Processional; A Little Suite for
Christmas. Philip Mead (pno). Metier MSV CD92067 (2CD Set).

George Crumb is one of the most original of all

contemporary American composers. His sound,
his voice is uniquely his own. Yet despite the
adventurousness of his compositional technique,
Crumbs music embodies no grand modernist
agenda. This music is deeply personal, a nostalgic
testament to Crumbs experiences as a youth
growing up in Charleston, West Virginia. In some
cases the references to these early years are quite
explicit. Crumbs chamber music, for example,
often incorporates folk instruments such as the

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musical saw and banjo. Even when folk instruments are not used, however, Crumb finds a way to
express the regional flavor of his boyhood home.
Indeed, it is, perhaps, the pursuit of such an aesthetic that leads Crumb to the inside of the piano, to the
strings themselves, which the pianist is asked to
probe and pluck like the strings of a guitar.
Crumbs music has been performed the world
over. Philip Meads two-CD set of the complete
piano music is the first of its kind to have been produced in the United Kingdom. The collection
comprises Makrokosmos, Volumes 1 and 2, the Five
Pieces for Piano, Gnomic Variations, Processional, and
A Little Suite for Christmas. These compositions,
written over a period of 20 years, provide ample
evidence to demonstrate that Crumbs unique
style emerged almost immediately, with its
mature, full-blown character already intact.
Central to Crumbs style is what David Burge
describes as his extreme sensitivity to the beauty
and expressive power of small units of sound,
including those produced by unconventional
means.1 Hence, sound itself, and not merely the
relations between sound-events, is elevated to a
principal role in Crumbs music.
Mead brings a virtuosity to these works that is
not often heard. Indeed, the general execution of
the pieces in these recordings leans more towards
a Beethovenian mode of expression and less
toward the light, ethereal sound most often associated with Crumbs music. Such an approach is
especially suited to works like the Five Pieces for
Piano, the only example of absolute music in the
entire collection. Meads impeccable performance
of these pieces is masterful and dramatic. The
flamboyance of the thirty-second-note fioraturas
in Makrokosmos, Volume 1, movement. 2, moreover, adds an exuberance to these passages which
is thrilling to hear. Meads performance of the seventh movement of Makrokosmos, Volume 2, Tora!
Tora! Tora! is also particularly well-executed.
In other cases, however, the idiosyncratic features of Meads technique seem to overshadow
the expressive nature of Crumbs relaxed and intimate settings. Mead often plays rhythms with
machine-like precision, even in unmeasured passages. This causes certain pieces such as the first
movement of Makrokosmos Volume 2 to seem
somewhat mechanical. In fact, the relentless precision with which Mead performs all dynamics and
rhythms is rather confusing, especially in light of
the fact that his liner notes reflect an acute aware-

ness of the sensitivity Crumbs settings require.

The ffff of the poco allargando near the end of the
Twin Suns (Makrokosmos, Volume 2, movement 4),
for example, while technically correct, seems
excessive given the subdued character of the piece
in general. In addition, some of the pieces seem
hurried, with one effect running into the next.
Thus,
Meads
performances,
while
accurate, sometimes tend to take on a mechanistic
demeanor, obscuring the dark, mysterious ambience Crumb is so well known for.
Meads interpretations of Crumbs piano
compositions are punctilious and, perhaps, somewhat overscrupulous. At the same time, they are
polished and even brilliant in terms of their execution. While perhaps missing some of the finer
points of Crumbs intensely personal style, this
CD set brings a fresh perspective to Crumbs
music and will undoubtedly help to broaden the
awareness of his music.
Edward Pearsall

Psanterin: Anthology of Israeli Music for Piano. Liora

Ziv-Li, Allan Sternfield, Ora Rotem-Nelken, Herut
Israeli, Tomer Lev, Michal Tal, Natasha Tadson, Yuval
Admoni, Astrith Baltsan, Allon Goldstein (pianists).
Israel Music Center IMCD: 104112 (9-CD set) produced by The Israel Composers League and the Israeli
Music Center (IMC), 55 Begin Rd, Tel Aviv, Israel.
(Tel/fax:00-972-(0)3-562 1282. Email: icl@zahav.net.il

The American musicologist Philip V Bohlman

(Professor of Music and of the Humanities at the
University of Chicago) has written:
Historical musicologists already speak of schools of
Israeli composition, ethnomusicologists analyse and
computerise Israeli folk song, and popular-music
scholars speculate why no other European country
wins the annual Eurovision Song Contest as frequently
as Israel. That a national music is extraordinarily
important to Israel almost goes without saying. But, in
fact, one pauses before saying it, because it would be
impossible to say exactly what Israeli music is.2

This nine-CD Anthology, Psanterin, the first of its

kind, helps to answer Bohlmans riddle, as its
unique survey of the field of Israeli music of four
generations underlines the Israeli composers
evolving quest for a balance between local and
international idioms, and past and present traditions, resulting in a distinctive aesthetic premised
on varying admixtures of East and West.3 The
2

David Burge, Annotated Chronological List of Crumbs

Works. in Don Gillespie (ed.), George Crumb, Profile of a
Composer (New York: C. F. Peters Corporation, 1986), p. 104.

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Afterword to Israeli Folk Music, ed. Hans Nathan, with a

Foreword and Afterword by Philip Bohlman (Madison,
Wisconsin: A-R Editions, Inc, 1994), p.54.
The nine-CD set is $95 (plus $5 post); a single CD is $15 ( plus $3
post).

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80

music, much of it available here for the first time,

is performed by an excellent team of ten pianists
from different generations who share virtuosity
and, more importantly, a deep dedication to and
involvement in the music. As a collection of 72
works by 56 composers (including nine women
composers), the anthology provides a valuable
and much-needed resource for performers, and
educationalists, through which to survey the
diversity of Israeli music over a span of over 70
years (19231993) and to assimilate the range of
idioms and techniques which makes it possible to
assess the important Israeli contribution to contemporary music. Of course there is an element of
selectivity, as in fact the piano repertoire available
includes over 400 possible works by over 120 composers, yet clearly the project, which has taken
over a decade to complete, represents an
admirable initiative to stimulate greater awareness of a vibrant musical culture.
The selection begins with a 1923 work by Joel
Engel (18881927), often regarded as the founder
of the Israeli style, since he was the leader of the St
Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music before
emigrating in 1924. A student of Taneyev and a
member of Rimsky-Korsakovs circle, Engel
accompanied Solomon Ansky on his pre-WWI
ethnographic expeditions around Jewish communities in the Russian Pale of Settlement,
collecting a vast amount of folk music (some still
in Russian archives) which he later arranged and
published with the Yuval publishing house he
founded. Liora Ziv-Lis performance of the short
folk dances which constitute Engels Five
Klavierstcke op. 19 (1923) show his style to be
somewhat in the idiom of Mussorgsky or RimskyKorsakov, with augmented intervals and
polytonal chords which occasionally pre-echo
later Israeli music. They are full of verve and
atmosphere, even if rather more straightforward
in style than the more radical members of the St
Petersburg group, such as Joseph Achron, Michael
Gnessin, and Alexander Weprik as well as
Joachim Stuschewsky, cellist of the Kolisch
Quartet in Vienna before he emigrated to
Palestine, two of whose programmatic piano
works, influenced by the Second Viennese School,
are featured here.
The pluralistic culture that developed even at
the earliest stage of Israeli society is described in a
famous line by critic-composer Max Brod, Kafkas
friend and publisher, From every corner, very different stones are brought in, stones which
constitute the structure of our music. This sampling of composers of that generation amply
highlights the division that eventually emerged
between those who espoused what became

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known as the Mediterranean School, and those

drawn to a more Austro-German modernist idiom.
The former responded to the demands of the collective vision and, like American music of that
period, idealized the rural, pastoral elements of
Jewish folklore a radical new aesthetic based on an
East-West synthesis. This may be seen in the music
of its main visionary, Paul Ben-Haim (18971984).
Born in Munich as Paul Frankenburger, Ben-Haim
studied at the Munich Academy of Music, and
worked as Bruno Walters assistant at the Bavarian
Opera and music director at the Augsburg opera,
until Hitlers ascent to power in 1933 cut short his
career and forced him to immigrate to Palestine. It
was a period in which he was exploring the use of
Jewish themes and folklore, as shown by his 1933
oratorio Joram and Suite No.1, op.20a for piano, in
which the slow movement quotes the Yemenite
folksong, Ali Beer (a song also set by Paul
Dessau). In Ben-Haims early Israeli works, there
is a clear emphasis too on French postImpressionist methods, Debussy and Ravel, in the
use of pentatonic modes and exotic orientalism
including a good deal of parallel motion of perfect
intervals, with inspiration derived from the rhythmic patterns of Arabic dance and modern
Palestinian Hora.
This radically new style is evident in his Five
Pieces for Piano, op.34 of 1943, brilliantly played
here by Liora Ziv-Li notably the first piece,
Pastorale, a reworking of the first movement of
the Suite no.2, the first piano work Ben-Haim
composed in his new surroundings. It weaves a
delicate melodic tracery with whole-tone scales
over a sustained backdrop, with hints of shepherd
pipes, plaintive cantillation phrases and fragmentary dance rhythms. The set is crowned by a
Toccata, which Ziv-Li drives with thrilling
momentum, somewhat reminiscent of Borodins
Polovtsian Dances, coloured by strumming repeated-note effects and buoyant Yemenite dance
figures. Her performance ranks extremely well
compared to two others (Gila Goldstein on
Centaur CRC 2506 and the renowned Pnina
Salzman on the Music in Israel series MII CD-19
of the Israel Music Institute). The unique amalgam of East and West matured further in the
Piano Sonata op.49, composed in Israel in 1954,
dedicated to Menahem Pressler, and here performed vividly by Allan Sternfield. Tomer Lev
also gives an evocative performance of BenHaims final work for piano, Chamsin (1972), a
more reflective piece in ternary form in which the
outer sections are built on a stark ground bass
with melismatic motifs in the melody, leading to a
central cantorial-style improvisatory meditation
above a pedal point.

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 81

In comparison to Ben-Haims music, recordings of that of his contemporaries is far scarcer,

and their inclusion here all the more laudable, as
for instance Erich Walter Sternberg (18911974), a
student of Hugo Leichtentritt, who settled in
Palestine in 1931, and whose Twelve Tribes of Israel
(1942) broadcast live on 15 May 1948 to celebrate
the new State was severely criticized in 1942 for
not being nationalistic enough. Sternbergs
Capriccio (1952), performed energetically by Allan
Sternfield, is somewhat poised between the influences of Richard Strauss and Shostakovich.
Similarly, one of the most popular works, The
Semitic Suite, by Alexander Uryah Boskovich,
offers a lucid perspective on the Mediterranean
style of which he was one of the prime ideologues. Born in 1907 in Transylvania, Boskovich
came to Tel-Aviv in 1938 and died there in 1964.
His aesthetic credo was for the artist to be a collective spokesman, avoid personal Romantic
expression and be inspired by the static desert
landscapes and dynamic nature of Hebrew and
Arabic languages and musics. It is not surprising
Boskovich was held in high esteem by his pupils,
including the Arab composer and writer Habib
Hassan Touma. The 1945 Semitic Suite, based on
the style of middle-eastern Jewish dances, later
became popular in orchestral garb, and is here
played with panache by Ziv-Li in its 1948 piano
solo version (a later two-piano version is often performed by his wife Miriam Boskovich).
Even more accessibly folkloristic was Mark
Lavry (19031967), born in Riga, who worked in
Berlin from 1926 as director of Labans dance theatre and as a film composer. In 1933 he returned to
Riga but immigrated to Palestine in 1935, directing the Palestine Radio later Kol Yisrael
(The Voice of Israel) radio. Lavry composed the
first-ever Israeli opera, Dan the Guard, and his
simpler popular style is evinced in the Five Country
Dances (1952) here played with aplomb by
Allan Sternfield.
The opposite aesthetic pole to Ben-Haim is represented by Josef Tal, who never rejected the
German modernist tradition in which he was nurtured: his Sonata (1950) receives a powerful
interpretation here from the young Allon
Goldstein. Born Josef Grnthal in 1910 in Pinne
(near Poznn, in what is now Poland), Tal studied
under Hindemith in Berlin (he recalls playing harp
in Gurrelieder under Schoenbergs baton), and emigrated to Palestine in 1934, where he became a
Professor and Director at the Jerusalem Academy
of Music, and Director of the Hebrew Universitys
Electro-Acoustics department. Nevertheless Tal
was fervently interested in Jewish themes and oriental elements, and searched for a means to

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integrate these within his avant-garde and serial

style, as in his First Symphony (1953), a powerfully
atonal work which yet uses a Babylonian theme
from Idelsohns Thesaurus of Jewish music.
Similarly Ostinato, the slow movement of Tals
Sonata the first piano work he composed in Israel
places the Hebrew pioneer folksong Rahel (by
Yehuda Sharett) in the bass while the upper voice
builds a highly expressive structure, based on quartal harmony, to climactic dissonant counterpoint,
with a return to tranquility at the close.
In contrast to the pastoral musings of the
Mediterranean style, one senses in Tals work a
biting struggle between East and West within the
very fabric of the music, keenly highlighted in
Allon Goldsteins engaging interpretation. That
aesthetic tension, between the regional and the
international tendencies of the East-West synthesis, still colours Israeli music, but is especially well
illustrated in the music of the early migr generation, including Joseph Kaminski, Emanuel
Amiran-Pougatchov, Yardena Alotin, Haim
Alexander, Menahem Avidom and Hanoch
Jacoby, and the more modernist camp of dn
Partos, Abel Ehrlich and Modercai Seter. Their
diversity of styles emerges throughout these fascinating recordings, allowing stylistic comparisons
which make this anthology a particularly unique
and useful document.
The aesthetic issues stand out in particular
relief in the music of the second-generation composers, those either born in Israel or who came as
young children from Europe, who sought a more
complex synthesis of East and West. Their awareness of middle-eastern idioms drew on biblical
cantillation, eastern Jewish folklore and Arabic
melisma and modes. All of them, especially Tsippi
Fleischer (b.1946), who is here included, and Ami
Maayani (b.1936), who is not, explored and
exploited Arabic idioms and techniques, such as
the maqam (microtonal modes) and taksim (rhythmic improvisation). Amongst the important
works by the major composers of the second generation featured is the Sonata No.2, Epitaph by
Tzvi Avni (b. Germany 1927), which fuses avantgarde techniques with traditional elements and a
programmatic idea drawn from Hassidic literature. The piece reflects the transformation in
Avnis style from his early years in the
Mediterranean style, following a decisive period
at the Princeton Electronic Music Center that
awakened him to the Darmstadt school and electro-acoustics. Avnis later music, including
Triptych (1993), and From There and Then (1998),
awaits recording. A similar blend of rhapsodic
cantillation with an avant-garde texture also infuses the music of Ben-Zion Orgad (b.1926), who

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82

came from Germany in 1933, studied with BenHaim, Tal, and also Copland in the USA, and
became Supervisor of Music Education for many
years. His Two Preludes in Impressionistic Mood
(1967) is performed evocatively by Ora RotemNelken. Her CD claims, curiously, to present
those works which ignore the Middle Eastern and
Oriental flavour and are written in Western style,
yet in my opinion these works highlight the latent
eastern potential of avant-garde techniques, and
consciously exploit Jewish and oriental elements.
This is the case, particularly, in the Journal from
Sidi-Bou-Said by Andre Hajdu, a Hungarian migr and former student of Kodly and Messiaen,
and in Furious Rondo El Oudh (1953) by Abel
Ehrlich, in which the Arabic lute referred to in its
title is colourfully conveyed in the pianistic textures. Apart from this comment, for the most part
the erudite sleeve-notes which accompany all nine
discs, by scholars such as Jehoash Hirschberg and
Ronit Seter, are impressive and form an invaluable
and authoritative source of historical background
and critical observation.
The Anthology includes several of the major
works commissioned for the Artur Rubinstein
International Piano Competition, amongst them
the texturally innovative Alliterations by Mark
Kopytman, one of the main second-generation

composers who came from Russia in 1972, as well

as works by younger composers, Moshe
Zormans jazz-inspired Homage a Gershwin, and
Ron Weidbergs flamboyant Impromptu No.2.
These works and others by the younger generation highlight how far the range of stylistic
possibilities had widened by the 1980s; the issue
was no longer not how to create a style, but to
express their own identity through the influences
around them. In contrast to the earlier generations who forged a new path and consolidated the
East-West synthesis, there is in the music of the
third and fourth generations a new sense of looking outward, of engaging in the international
arena, yet always acutely aware of the distinctive
influence of local and regional styles.
This is shown in How Far East How Further West?
by Yinam Leef, (b.1953) one of the first of his generation to pursue postgraduate studies at the
University of Pennsylvania with Richard Wernick,
George Rochberg and George Crumb, and later at
Tanglewood with Berio; Haim Permont and
Oded Zehavi (not featured here) followed in his
tracks. A similar fresh approach is evidenced in the
works presented here by Betty Olivero (a Berio
student), Noa Guy, Arie Shapira, whose radical Off
Piano explores a Ferneyhough-like world of
nuances, Dan Yuhas, Menachem Zur, and the

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 83

younger post-67 generation of Gil Shohat and

Ronn Yedidia. Even in their most recent abstract
and avant-garde works there are various, unexpected expressions of the symbiosis, with either
overt or veiled allusions to Jewish heritage and
Middle-Eastern and oriental elements.
Inevitably there are some understandable
omissions, such as Stefan Wolpe, who though living in Palestine and teaching the younger
generation of Israeli composers, found it more
fruitful to move to America; moreover his works
have been recorded by pianists such as David
Holzman (Bridge Records). Similarly with composers of the Russian school who passed through
Palestine, eventually settling in the USA, such as
Joseph Achron and Lazare Saminsky; but it was
perhaps odd to omit those younger composers
who grew up or were educated in Israel but eventually settled in the USA such as Shulamit Ran and
Jan Radzynski (see my interview with Ran in
Tempo Vol. 58, No.227). Other omissions of major
composers of the second generation include
Yehezkel Braun, Ami Maayani and Noam Sherriff,
and of the prolific spirits of the younger generation Oded Zehavi, Aharon Harlap, Sally Pinkus,
Rami Bar-Niv, Oded Assaf, Reuben Seroussi,
Hagar Kadima, Bardanshvili, Lior Navok and others. The later works of some earlier composers, as
well as many pedagogic compositions, are similarly neglected. These omissions are probably due to
space rather than to any critical agenda, though
they might have been mentioned within the
sleeve-notes as a point of information.
Nevertheless this does not detract from the main
task, and but rather whets ones appetite for more
recordings and anthologies. However there is a
great deal that is included, and if it is not a comprehensive archive, the Anthology does succeed in
achieving a representative overview of a valuable,
and ever expanding repertoire, ideal as a reference
tool for scholars and performers alike.
Throughout the Anthology one senses how far
the beneficial influence of each generation on its
successors is keenly felt and an intimate relationship and unanimity of purpose and identity
thereby fostered. Certainly there is a wide stylistic
distance between Ben-Haim or Boskovich and
Shapira and Shohat, equivalent to the distance
between the English composers Holst or Vaughan
Williams and James Macmillan and MarkAnthony Turnage. Yet each generation is
grappling with similar aesthetic issues the assimilation of diverse traditions, even if the definition
of those traditions has expanded and become
more complex. While each generation has had to
confront new issues in its quest, in a sense the
searching is itself at the heart of an Israeli style.

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Israeli music thus encapsulates a quintessential

concern, the balance between local and international idioms, and past and present traditions,
which also colours the contemporary music scene
in a global context. In that respect this Anthology
is a welcome and enriching step towards the deeper appreciation not only of Israeli music but its
place in the wider sphere of contemporary musical trends in general. A project of this scope and
quality takes much time, effort and determination
qualities for which much credit is due to the
Israel Composers League. The pianists bring
artistic excellence and imagination to the challenging and highly virtuoso repertoire, and thus
offer a crucial contribution to the enjoyment and
communicative appeal of the music. While one
may look forward to additions to the basic corpus
presented here, its extension to different genres,
and its contextualization in relation to contemporary piano music in the regional and
international arena, this Anthology certainly represents a promising and enriching benchmark for
the future.
Malcolm Miller

FEINBERG: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1, op.1 (1915)1, 2, op.2

(191516)2, 3, op.3 (1916)2, 4, op.6 (1918)1, 5, op.10

(192021)1, 6, op.13 (1923)2. 1Nikolaos Samaltanos,
2
Christophe Sirodeau (pnos). BIS-CD-1413.
FEINBERG: Piano Sonatas Nos. 7, op.21 (192428)2,

8, op.21a (193334)2, 9, op.29 (1939)1, 10, op.30

(194044)1, 11, op.40 (1952)1, 12, op.48 (1962)2.
1
Nikolaos Samaltanos, 2Christophe Sirodeau
(pnos). BIS-CD-1414.
What a lively, humane yet recondite sensibility
inhabits these works! Nikolaos Samaltanos and
Christophe Sirodeau have already performed
pianistic prodigies for BIS in advocacy of their
great Greek compatriot Skalkottas; here they turn
to a significant Russian-Jewish pianist-composer
whose music was long sidelined. Born in 1890,
from 1922 until his death 40 years later Samuil
Evgenievitch Feinberg was professor of piano at
the Moscow Conservatory. Purely as a pianist and
pedagogue he was a towering figure in the Russian
tradition. But the late-Imperial / early Soviet
piano repertoire has lately been opening out in the
most fascinating manner with the rehabilitation of
such figures as Roslavets, Louri, Alexandrov and
Catoire and Feinberg (who has also been championed recently by Jonathan Powell) proves to be a
major member of that company. Presented
together on record for the first time as a complete,
coherent cycle, his twelve Piano Sonatas (half of

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84

them receiving their first recordings) reveal a

musical thinker and keyboard poet of impressive
stature, his ideas all the more important for their
sometimes elusive nature.
Feinbergs first six sonatas, composed 191523,
manifest parallels to those of Alexandrov,
Miaskovsky or Medtner in the same period. All in
a single movement apart from the 3-movement
No.3 (which has a funeral-march slow movement
and throws most of its weight into a massive,
headlong finale), the sonatas start by bearing the
strong imprint of Scriabin almost, it seems, as a
logical continuation of his last three sonatas. But
they move towards a sure individuality of expression, as in the uneasily fluttering and swirling
textures of the Fourth (dedicated to Miaskovsky)
and the Schumannesque Fifth with its kaleidoscopic changes of mood. The climax of this period
is Sonata No.6, a superbly intense work which
Feinberg premired at the 1925 Venice Festival: its
extreme chromaticism and continuous motivic
development make his declared admiration for
Schoenberg perfectly explicable. In fact its basis,
arrived at independent of Schoenberg, is claimed
to be a 12-tone row, as well as the often-audible
BACH motif. The creative fire that infuses these
works is unmistakable and they are also music of
the highest virtuoso standard. These young Greek
pianists, both Moscow-trained, give a dazzling,
eloquent account of it.
It is however in the second disc that their advocacy bears the most fascinating fruit. One had
read that Feinbergs last six piano sonatas, composed over a much longer span (nearly 40 years,
whereas Nos.16 emerged in eight), showed a
retreat from the radicalism of his first six. Yet here
is no dull descent into Soviet orthodoxy, despite all
the dangers that beset the Jewish pedagogue in
Moscow throughout the Stalinist era. Certainly
the almost atonal opening of the Seventh Sonata
of 19248 (which, like the Eighth of 19334, was
felt too dangerous to publish in Feinbergs lifetime) is the most obviously modernist music on
this disc. Yet the complex and concentrated later
sonatas of the war years and after, with their
wider range of tonal reference and occasional
shafts of Bach-like chorale writing (Feinberg was a
notable transcriber of JSB) offer no comforting
emotional clichs. Even at their most virtuosic
these works remain troubled, intimate, confiding.
It is almost impossible to imagine that such a
composer could perpetrate anything so public
in address as a piano concerto: yet Feinberg
wrote three, and I would very much like to hear
them. (Christoph Sirodeau has the First in his
repertoire, so we may hope that BIS is contemplating their release.)

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This music, so daringly compressed and so

deeply, so honestly complex in its expression,
reflects a very high degree of culture. Technically
and emotionally the sonatas seem one of the summits of Russian piano composition and this even
though it could well be argued that very little of
Feinbergs basic material is especially attractive or
memorable in itself. (The Eighth Sonatas
berceuse-like Andante is a notable exception.) The
single-movement sonatas of Scriabin and
Medtner again come to mind, but Feinberg has
outpaced them into an imaginative region devoid
of illusion, even perhaps of hope; a region of
which he strives to communicate a pitilessly exact
account.
All six works are striking in their way and all
demand repeated hearings to yield their full
expressive measure. I would single out for comment the torrential, flickering toccata-like
impulse of the Ninth Sonata (1939).4 Also the
Eleventh (1952), composed at the height of the
post-Zhdanov terror (when Feinberg too was
denounced for formalism). This Sonata brings
several contrasting musical characters to painful
half-birth yet discovers a tragic eloquence in their
very incompleteness perhaps, as Sirodeau says in
his notes, this is not an entirely successful work,
but it exercises a powerful fascination. And finally
the valedictory Twelfth Sonata (1962), Feinbergs
last work, whose first movement grew out of an
unsuccessful attempt to write something simple
enough for a childrens album.5 This works
deeply elegiac finale, constantly evoking and
playing upon the main theme of Brahmss op.117
no.3, ends in a limpid, mysterious harmonic nomans-land derived from one of Feinbergs
Lermontov settings.
Altogether these discs are something of a revelation of a composer whose qualities and appeal
derive not from a use of folk-derived colour or
externalized musical symbolism, but a consummate compositional and instrumental technique
allied to the exploration of a highly personal imaginative world and an unfailing sense of
responsibility to the potential and implications of
his material. These are rare qualities in any age.
Calum MacDonald

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I am confident that at least half a dozen readers will know what

I mean to convey when I liken this work to another headlong
single-movement structure conceived as if in one breath the
Seventh Sonata of Harold Truscott. Not but Feinberg is by some
way the subtler composer.
He made recompense with an entire book of childrens pieces
before going on to complete the sonata.

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 85

ROGER SMALLEY: Poles Apart and other chamber

works. Continuum Ensemble. NMC DO 83.

Since his move to Australia in the mid-1970s, we

see and hear far less than we ought to in this country of Roger Smalley, both as composer and
pianist. NMCs new recording of his recent chamber music is to be welcomed, therefore, especially
when performed and recorded with the empathy
and commitment displayed by pianist Douglas
Finch and the Continuum Ensemble.
Smalleys work for two pianos, Accord (197475)
consolidated a period of working within an
expanded sense of modality/ tonality, by mainly
deriving his material from quasi or actual harmonic series (cf. Beat Music, Strata). In many of his
pieces from the past two decades, however, the
source material is based upon quotations and harmonic precedents encountered in music by
Chopin and Brahms.
Smalleys engagement with these composers is
certainly no fashionable, postmodernist whim
and should not really come as any surprise even
the early orchestral Gloria Tibi Trinitas 1
(1965/69), although inhabiting a different soundworld , is dedicated to the memory of Busoni.
Increasingly, his music has seemed to function as
commentaries upon favourite pieces and has
resulted in works that are both invigorating and
immediate in impact.
Three of the five pieces on this disc utilize
material by Chopin, namely three Mazurkas:
op.24 no.4 in B flat minor (Chopin Variations), op.52
no.2 in A flat (Piano Trio) and op.50 no.3 in C sharp
minor (third movement of Poles Apart). The
Variations for solo piano are a probing and trenchant reaction to the wedge-shapes of the Chopin
original, whilst in the Passacaglia movement of
the Piano Trio, Smalley achieves a beautiful,
almost late-Beethovenian sense of poise and
restraint. (The final movement, incidentally,
opens with a gesture which is virtually identical to
that which launches the Concerto for Piano and
Orchestra ).
The remaining two works look to Brahms for
their inspiration: in the case of the Trio for clarinet, viola and piano, an allusion to the first
variation of the finale of the Sonata in Eb, op.120,
whilst Crepuscule for piano quartet quarries its
material from the Intermezzo in E minor, op.l 16
no.5. This somewhat enigmatic piece elicits a wide
palette and variety of textures from the four
instruments.
Roger Smalleys affectionate appropriation of
past masters in these five chamber works serve to
remind us of just how liberating Australia has

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been for him over these past 30 years. Indeed, he

has thrown off the spectre of Stockhausen and
seemingly found himself.
Richard Leigh Harris

IAN WILSON: from the Book of Longing; BIG; Drive;

Verschwindend; Spilliaerts Beach; For Eileen, after rain;
Lim; A Haunted Heart. Hugh Tinney (pf ), Catherine
Leonard (vn). Riverrun RVRCD65.

This CD is a welcome selection of Ian Wilsons

chamber works for violin and piano. Wilsons
growing reputation has thus far been built on concertos, orchestral works and the recent chamber
opera Hamelin. Indeed, the most significant work
on the CD, Lim, has its origins in an orchestral
commission. Written for Hugh Tinney, who performs the piece here, it is in fact the lush,
melifluous solo part from the concerto for piano
and strings, Limena, and was first conceived as a
stand-alone piece before Wilson added a characteristic orchestral halo.
Lim is one of two pieces written especially for
the performers on this CD: the other is from the
Book of Longing, which was commissioned by the
violinist Catherine Leonard. It opens the disc with
a spacious processional, full of subtle details in the
violin writing. This soon develops into a series
of short tangos before returning to the processional theme, and ending with a gentle percussive
strumming of the tango rhythm. The piece was
inspired by the temptations of Christ in the
desert, and Wilson uses the tangos, Milton-like, to
give both distance and seduction to Satans
blandishments.
While never an eclectic composer, Wilson uses
a varied musical style that fluidly changes mood
and texture in short spaces of time. This is perhaps
a result of his preference for modes as compositional tools rather than harmonic fields, and is
supported by his careful and inventive ear. The
remaining pieces on this CD bear testament to
this. BIG (composed in 1991) is the earliest and
most muscular of these, and betrays Wilsons
early post-minimalist leanings. While this is an
aesthetic he has largely moved away from, BIG
retains connexions with later pieces in its use of a
broad recurring motif also a feature of Lim. Of
the others Drive, an arrangement of a work for
soprano saxophone, is the most varied, developing from sparse opening gestures into an
extended, ostinato-based aria.
Both Leonard and Tinney have strong associations with Wilsons music (the concerto Messenger
was also written for Leonard), and both render the

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86

precise lyricism of his later pieces to great effect.

While the written-in resonances of Wilsons
orchestral works may not be present in these
chamber pieces, this is compensated by a greater
clarity of line that is no less satisfying.
Tim Johnson

LEE HYLA: Bass Clarinet Concerto1; Trans; Violin

Concerto2. 1Tim Smith (bass cl), 2Laura Frautschi (vln),

Boston Modern Orchestra Project c. Gil Rose. New
World 80614-2

The American composer Lee Hyla (b. 1952) is one

of an increasing number of modern Classical composers not least from the Nordic world, e.g.
Mikael Edlund and Anders Hillborg whose roots
lie in the world of rock music. Hyla was a practicing [sic] rocker who also worked in new music
ensembles, activities conducted over a bedrock of
classical studies at the New England Conservatory
(where he is now Chairman of the composition
department) and SUNY, Stony Brook. His individual style is eclectic, to say the least, the basis being
free atonality; he delights in bringing together
seemingly unrelated elements from his diverse
background. Take the finale of the Second String

Quartet (1985), for example, where a modal

melody sounding like a modern descendant of
Vaughan Williamss lark boogies along with a quotation from a pop song by Booker T and the MGs.
This disc is not New Worlds first excursion into
Hylas music: they released five of his works in
1996 under the title We Speak Etruscan from the
bracing duo for baritone saxophone and bass clarinet of four years before and also featuring his
Second and Third String Quartets (the latter composed in 1989), an ensemble piece for 12 players
entitled Pre-Pulse Suspended (1984) and the Second
Piano Concerto (1991). At just under 20 minutes
duration, this latter was at that time Hylas most
extended instrumental work, and of its companions only the Second Quartet made it past a
quarter of an hour. Although such brevity might
in some creators be evidence of a shortness of
compositional breath, this is not the case with
Hyla (any more than it is with, say, Jn Leifs or
Leifur Thorarinsson) as the Third Quartet
amply confirms.
Just one piece on New Worlds new disc surpasses that time-span: the Violin Concerto of
2001, which runs in this recording to over 24 minutes. Unlike the Second Piano Concerto, which
was cast in four movements, the Violin Concerto
is in one extended span. Part of the melodic

04

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19 - 28 November
The internationally renowned Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
presents a stunning programme of contemporary music, dance,
film and music theatre from around the world
Pioneering Creativity
Over 50 events: 22 world premieres, 35 UK premieres and 4 new commissions

Featured Composers
Kevin Volans, Richard Ayres, Rebecca Saunders, Richard Rijnvos, Howard Skempton,
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

International Highlights
Klangforum Wien, China Found Music Workshop, Oslo Sinfonietta, Jonny Axelsson, SISU,
Alter Ego, Contempoartensemble, Ives Ensemble, Musikfabrik, Ictus Ensemble, Asko

Music Theatre
Aldeburgh Almeida Opera's The lo Passion (music by Sir Harrison Birtwistle), Music Theatre Wales'
The Piano Tuner (music by Nigel Osborne)

Jazz
Dhafer Youssef, Evan Parker, Barry Guy, Paul Lytton

Festival Finale
Asko and EXAUDI perform UK premieres of Richard Ayres' Valentine Tregashian Considers ....
and NONcerto for Horn.

For a Festival brochure: call 01484 425082 click www.hcmf.co.uk

Box Office 01484 430528 (opens 18 September)

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 87

material derives from a tune by the Arts

Ensemble of Chicago, Theme de Yoyo well, its
bass line, to be precise as much as a motivic
library as for the qualities of the bass itself.
Motivic development is notable throughout, a
particularly memorable example being the passage starting around the 630 mark and building
to an impressive climax several minutes later. The
emotional range of the music is very wide and
the free-flowing structure makes this an unusually compelling work. In fact, I would go so far as to
aver that this is one of the finest post-1945 violin
concertos to have emerged from the United
States. Laura Frautschi plays the taxing solo part
sensitively and with a sweet tone.
The other concerto featured is that for bass clarinet, written in 1988 and played here in a slightly
revised form from 2001 by Tim Smith, for whom it
was composed (and who played in three of the
Hyla works on New Worlds older release and
recorded several others for the Avant label). The
Bass Clarinet Concerto is in a single compact
movement, over and done with in under 11 minutes, but packed with incident. Running through
it is an old American country song, Longest Train
I Ever Saw, though the writing seems to owe
more to contemporary jazz than country and
western. It is certainly extremely virtuosic as
Smiths playing audibly confirms as is the orchestration, which provides a rich background for the
soloist to operate against.
Between the two concerti comes a purely
orchestral work, Trans (1996), an abstract threemovement suite in which the importance of
transformation of material as an ongoing concern is paramount, according to annotator
Theodore Mook. It is a very effectively written
work, expressionist in tone but not aggressively
so. It does not appear to have any extra-musical
connotations (although Mook hints there are
some for all three works) but does fall broadly into
the traditional fast-slow-fast pattern, a short
atmospheric central span being framed by two
larger, faster ones, the finale having some lighter
elements. While the music is not symphonic by
any means, it does give a hint as to what a Hyla
Symphony might sound like.
The performances by the Boston Music
Project are committed and well played under
Gil Roses firm direction. New Worlds sound is a
touch harsh, but this suits the music and rather
underscores the American accent. I am glad
to have made this musics acquaintance and
hope New World will bring us some more Hyla
in due time.
Guy Rickards

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CORIGLIANO: Symphony No. 2; The Mannheim

Rocket. Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra c. John
Storgrds. Ondine ODE10392
ROUSE: Violin Concerto1; Rapture; Der gerettete

Alberich2. 1Cho-Liang Lin (vln), 2Evelyn Glennie (perc),

Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra c. Leif Segerstam.
Ondine ODE10162
HIGDON: Concerto for Orchestra; City Scape. Atlanta

Symphony Orchestra c. Robert Spano. Telarc.

CD80620 (Super Audio version SACD60620)

Where is American orchestral music heading?

Recent discs by three composers attracting attention outside of their native country give some
pointers. John Corigliano (b. 1938) is the most
established: his Symphony No. 2 won the 2001
Pulitzer Prize. Next in seniority is Christopher
Rouse (b. 1949), while the music of Jennifer
Higdon (b. 1962) is just beginning to be recorded.
Old Europe remains a potent influence on the
first two explicitly so in Rouses Wagnerhaunted Der gerettete Alberich, while it is the
American
but
European-schooled
trio
of Copland, Bernstein and Barber (rather than
Cage or Carter) who loom largest as native
influences.
Corigliano is the most serious and inward-looking of the three. Following on from his
Grawemeyer award-winning Symphony No.1
(1990), which took the AIDS catastrophe as its
theme, the Second (for strings, 2000), maintains a
sombre atmosphere throughout its 45 minutes.
The first of five movements (they have pointedly
conventional titles: Prelude, Scherzo, Nocturne,
Fugue, Postlude) puts the technique of spatial notation, whereby each player is given a small degree of
improvisatory freedom, linking up with the others
at defined points, to a familiar end. Emerging from
the slow, sad haze of Coriglianos writing are fragments of a dirge played in the style of a viol consort
or glimpses of full-string plangencies that might
even be Elgar. It is as if the Renaissance world, the
era of Romanticism and our own time are connected by the same tragic sense.
Bartk is the dominant influence in the scherzo, where manic off-beat driving rhythms are set
against a jerky fragment played by four soloists.
Beethoven is here too, in the fast parallel scurryings. The piece has, unsurprisingly, been adapted
from Coriglianos 1996 String Quartet; if not
always successfully so. The mood of reflectiveness
(let alone the references to earlier string quartets)
is more suited to the intimacy of chamber music.
Self-consciously lush string writing and the
ancient viol sound interrupt the scherzos central

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88

section: this is not polystylism la Schnittke, but a

palimpsest of approaches governed by moods of
anger and mourning.
After the Bartkian night-music of the third
movement, the fourth is Coriglianos unusual take
on the fugue. Only one theme is used, but played
asynchronously so that only rarely are the orchestral players in accord. Typically, though the
fugues subject could be by Bach, the harrowing
slow and emphatic climax is pure Corigliano
rooted in the formality of the string quartets
European heritage, but with an undertow of
Mahlerian agony. To complete the pantheon of
great quartet-writing influences, the last movements insistent two-note falling phrase is very
much in the spirit of Shostakovich. For all the
Symphonys faults (its quartet-like feel, indebtedness to other composers techniques, unrelieved
melancholy) the piece communicates so powerfully that the composers reputation can only be
enhanced. The coupling, The Mannheim Rocket, is a
brief showpiece with bells and whistles literally.
Where Coriglianos musical references are
diverse and allusive, Rouses Fantasy for solo percussion and orchestra Der gerettete Alberich
(Alberich Saved) opens with a minute of music from
the end of Gtterdmmerung. The three-movement
piece then goes on to explore aspects of Alberichs
character in an imagined life after the time spent
in Wagners opera. Rouses challenge is that, even
with the armoury of percussion that he equips the
always-enthusiastic Evelyn Glennie with, there is a
tendency to abandon subtle characterization (not
the percussions strong point in any case) in favour
of the frenetic and virtuosic, as we get in the first
movement, or else letting the soloist take a back
seat while the orchestra carries the weight of the
argument, allusions to the 19th century (as with
Corigliano) never far away when dramatic gestures are needed.
Wild and lively though the two outer movements are (in the third Rouse gives way to
percussions natural tendencies and transforms
Glennie into a rock-drummer), the best is the
restrained slow second. A long ppp string note is
held as the soloist, mostly on the marimba, has a
chance to give life to a reflective Alberich before
the Wagner horns intone the Dawn motif. Rouses
extravert qualities and his penchant for very loud
and emphatic writing are also heard his 1991
Violin Concerto with Cho-Liang Lin, who gave its
premire, as a fluent soloist. The second of the
works two movements is an outgoing toccata that
quotes from Beethovens Seventh Symphonies in a
breezy, maverick manner that the soloist sustains
right up to the surprising all-brass-and-bells crashing ending. The first-movement opening is more

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interesting, using the string section leaders to play

as a quartet. Once again Romanticism seems
Rouses touchstone of seriousness, but the violins
singing line is a little too sweet and the tutti overscored. Nevertheless, theres a wonderfully
old-fashioned big tune in the middle of it all before
a surprisingly low-key conclusion. If the Concerto
lacks an underpinning emotional logic it at least
just as in the 13-minute showpiece Rapture (think
Quiet City and early Nielsen) holds the listeners
attention with its bravura surface.
By contrast, Jennifer Higdons works that have
appeared on disc to date sound all-American. The
Concerto for Orchestra (2002) has five movements: the first is bright and open, the second (for
strings) light and playful, the third (marked mystical) is homely. In the fourth vibraphones, crotales
and other percussion instruments tock and glisten
prettily until the bongos and drums muscle in. In
the fifth, Higdon uses a timpani solo in an attempt
to give propulsion to an otherwise featureless
score. Even when the subject-matter is both personal and tragic as in blue cathedral (1999, on
Telarc CD80596), a short orchestral piece about
the death of the composers brother Higdons
music eschews pathos and suffering altogether.
The Concerto was commissioned by the Curtis
Institute of Music and in a note about it Higdon
writes Curtis is a home of knowledge a place to
reach towards that beautiful expression of the
soul that comes through music. That prose style
is highly reflective of the feel of Higdons compositions. The best movement in City Scape (2002),
her portrait of Atlanta, is the third, where Higdon
lets something unexpected and uncontrolled out
from all the Coplandish pastoralism. One longs
for the uncertainties of the European experience
beneath the American polish.
Robert Stein

MORTON GOULD: Symphony No. 2. HARBISON:

Cello Concerto1. STUCKY: Son et Lumire. GABRIEL

GOULD: Watercolors2. 1David Finckel (vlc), 2Robert
Sheena (cor anglais), Albany Symphony Orchestra c.
David Alan Miller. Albany TROY 605.
McKINLEY: Violin Concerto1; Symphony of Winds;

Sinfonie Concertante2. 1Janet Packer (vln), Warsaw

National Philharmonic c. Jerzy Svoboda, 2Silesian
Philarmonic Orchestra c. Joel Suben. MMC 2119.
McKINLEY: Wind, Fire, and Ice1; Mostly Mozart2; Silent
Whispers3. 1Victoria Griswold (pno), London Symphony
Orchestra c. Roger Briggs, 2Royal Liverpool
Philharmonic c. Gerard Schwarz, 3Warsaw Philharmonic
c. Robert Black. MMC 2134.

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 89

McKINLEY: Symphony No. 6, Prague1. STEWART:

Scherzo. BIGGS: Salutation. ROSSI: Moon-Mirror.
1
Roman Janal (bar), Czech Radio Symphony c. Vladimir
Valek. MMC 2123.

The three numbered Symphonies of Morton

Gould were all written in the 1940s, a decade of
great importance in American music. The Second
Symphony (On Marching Tunes), first heard just
before D-Day, is undoubtedly a war symphony,
both in context and idiom, but despite its rather
jingoistic sub-title and occasional open-hearted
exhilaration, this is a work of much greater depth
than breadth. In the last movement, Memorial,
especially, Gould finds a poignancy of utterance
and sensibility which points the way towards the
monumental Third Symphony (TROY 515) of
1947. Gould has long been type-cast as an essentially lightweight composer, but thanks to a recent
biography by Peter Goodman (Amadeus Press,
2000) and the Albany Symphony (this is their third
Gould CD) we are starting to evaluate him better
as a serious symphonic artist, and these earlier
pieces are revealing a real strength of character.
John Harbison has written many fine concertos, most of which have been recorded; the Cello
Concerto (1994) is both glorious and enigmatic.
The nineties were a good decade for American
Cello Concertos (including those by Rouse,
Danielpour and Stephen Albert, to name a few).
Harbison is an impressionist with the richest of
palettes and the subtlest of ears; the nocturnal
opening is eerily beautiful. The shorter pieces by
Gabriel Gould (no relation to Morton) and
Stephen Stucky, too, are pastel-shaded tableaux of
a paler hue than Harbison but they fill up this fine
CD very pleasantly.
William Thomas McKinley (b 1938) recognized
long ago that phenomenal talent and prodigious
industry as a composer doesnt get you recordings.
So, in his case: you start your own record company
and publishing house. MMC Records have so far
notched up over 120 releases, mainly orchestral and
featuring music by many of McKinleys pupils and
contemporaries as well as, of course, his own
works. Even so, small labels have to struggle against
the demands of a marketing and publicity world
hooked on big name artists and familiar repertoire.
McKinleys music is instantly recognizable: he has
that dazzling American immediacy and spontaneity of character (as did Bernstein and Gould ). But
your shades on and you become aware of a much
more complex and structured architecture: a fascinating and unique blend of classical and romantic
ideals. Perhaps his closest parallel is his teacher
Gunther Schuller, also (like McKinley) a brilliant
jazz musician drawn to the great models of the

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90

past: his Eine Kleine Posaunemusik pays a similar

homage to that in Mostly Mozart (Mostly
McKinley in this case, actually).
The Violin Concerto (1995) is Prokofievian
(redolent of Romeo and Juliet especially) but there
is no way someone of McKinleys strength of
character is going to lose his identity to the
Russian master in those gaunt, striding marches.
You have what you get: a thrilling, arching romantic concerto, sumptuously orchestrated, cast in
four movements equating to each of the four seasons. Wind, Fire and Ice (2000) brings out a
diabolical streak in McKinley: the structures are
looser and after a deceptively cool opening sunbursts of flame erupt amidst a maelstrom of
clashing tonalities and surging primitivism. The
sinuous, weaving thread of the piano holds the
line through the complex orchestral labyrinth.
Possibly Messiaen and Takemitsu heave into view
occasionally here. In Silent Whispers (1992) the
piano spins a web of broken chords through a
glimmering orchestral spectrum. In the Sinfonie
Concertante (1985) small groups of players discourse with full orchestra in a musical landscape

where ideas grow first separately and then simultaneously in a very ordered and disciplined way.
But the most impressive essay here, in my view,
is the Symphony No. 6, Prague (1990), at nearly 40
minutes McKinleys largest work to date (other
than his still unperformed Missa Futura of 1999). A
deeply felt, tragic utterance of Mahlerian breadth,
this symphony coheres through the long monumental opening theme, blown apart in one of the
most amazing scherzos since Shostakovich
Eighth, and the remote, poetic slow movement
with endless wheeling celesta and glockenspiel
arpeggios, rather like the Holst of Neptune. At
its end is a powerful ode for baritone and orchestra
to the eponymous city and its treasured memory.
Marc Rossis Moon-Mirror is also a very impressive
tone poem , with his teacher (McKinley) clearly
lighting the way. Anyone looking for a most satisfying and sophisticated late romantic idiom
should investigate McKinley: his brilliant technical
prowess, deep understanding and empathy with
the great classical traditions and his eloquent
sense of contemporary language deserve him a
prominent place in American music.
Bret Johnson

In the October 2003 issue of Tempo we challenged readers to stick their necks out to the
extent of each naming a single work
composed in the past quarter-century which
he or she felt to deserve the accolade of
masterpiece. The closing date for nominations was 1 June 2004 and the results were to
be printed in the current issue, October 2004.
Regrettably, severe pressure of space has
caused us to hold over the publication and

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analysis of the results until the following issue

(Volume 59, No.231, January 2005). In the
meantime, we can disclose that 22 works by
18 composers were nominated; no work
received more than one vote; 16 composers
had one work nominated, one had two
works, and one had no less than four.
Speculation as to this individuals identity
may help to pass the time until the results are
printed in full.

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