May 15, 2014

  • 20th Century Overview: 1926-1950

    As we head into the latter 1920s up to mid-century, it seems like there are just really a lot of interesting works, but obvious shifts in what genres are being phased out or in as well.  Certainly, there are many interesting voices in this period and what I find more fascinating is how my own musical preferences in this period have shifted from some of the more Germanic-influenced pieces to a more French flavor.  It is quite difficult to try and draw a line around some of these great pieces and this is not an exhaustive list, but certainly it is another great jumping off point for anyone to explore the diverse world of classical music.

     

     

    Favorite Symphonies

    Britten: Simple Symphony

    Copland: Symphony No. 3

    Diamond: Symphony No. 3

    Hanson: Symphony No. 2 -"Romantic"

    Harris: Symphony No. 3

    Ives: A Symphony: New England Holidays

    Mennin: Symphony No. 3

    Messiaen: Turangalîla Symphony

    Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5 in Bb, Op. 100

    Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 3

    Roussel: Symphony No. 3

    Schuman: Symphony No. 3

    Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5; Symphony No. 7 in C, Op. 60 (Leningrad)

    Stravinsky: Symphony in C

    Thomson: Symphony on Hymn Tune

     

    I have a great interest in the form of the symphony and my music collection is thus filled with many examples of this form throughout music history.  There are several significant pieces in this batch of works.  Though it is not an “essential” repertoire piece, Roussel’s third symphony is certainly among my favorite works of the time next to the fifth symphonies of Prokofiev and Shostakovich.  Harris’s third symphony is one of his finest works.  I fell in love with Hanson’s second symphony in college and Delos soon issued all the symphonies (now on Naxos) which expanded my appreciation for this composer.  The Copland is another great symphonic essay.  For contrast there is the colorful Messiaen work.  Really, I don’t think one could go wrong with any of the pieces listed above!

     

    Favorite Works for Soloist with Orchestra

    Barber: Violin Concerto, Op. 14

    Berg: Violin Concerto (To the Memory of An Angel)

    Bernstein: Prelude, Fugue, & Riffs

    Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Guitar Concerto No. 1 in D, Op. 99

    Ibert: Flute Concerto

    Korngold: Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35

    Poulenc: Concerto for Two Pianos; Concerto in g for organ, strings, and timpani

    Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2; Peter & the Wolf

    Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini

    Ravel:  Concerto for Left Hand in D

    Piano Concerto in G

    Schoenberg: A Survivor from Warsaw

     

    The Rachmaninoff is probably the single most famous work in this list.  The Berg I have always loved as one of the composer’s most heartfelt and moving pieces.  In a more romantic vein, the Barber (and really the Korngold too!) is a gorgeous concerto.  Poulenc’s music is always engaging and his work for organ and strings is a wonderful introduction to the composer’s style.  The concert for 2 pianos is an excellent further way to explore his music.  The second Prokofiev concerto has always been another of my favorites of this composer and is worth checking out.  The other pieces here have managed to find their way into my collective musical taste.  The Schoenberg is really an intense piece that gets at the heart of the horrors of WWII in visceral ways.

     

    Favorite Music for Ballet

    Carpenter: Skyscrapers

    Copland: Billy the Kid; Rodeo; Appalachian Spring

    Ginastera: Estancia

    Khachaturian: Gayaneh

    Ravel: Bolero

     

    In compiling this list of great 20th-century works, I was struck at this category especially.  The Ginastera piece was an early discovery in my musical journey along with a host of great Mexican and Latin-American works.  Carpenter’s piece is really a great example of jazz and orchestral writing from an unjustly neglected composer.  The Copland pieces are basically essential American pieces though perhaps the Western-themed ones are slightly less “essential” and have fallen along the wayside.  There is a lot more to Khachaturian than meets the eye and finding ballet collections with his music is well worth the time.

     

     

    Favorite Orchestral Pieces

    Anderson: Fiddle-Faddle; Irish Suite; Sleigh Ride; The Typewriter;  A Christmas Festival

    Barber: Overture to "The School for Scandal", Op. 5; First Essay for Orchestra; Adagio for Strings

    Bartok: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste; Concerto for Orchestra

    Britten: The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra

    Copland: El Salon Mexico; Quiet City

    Gershwin: An American in Paris; Cuban Overture

    Grofe: Grand Canyon Suite

    Harris: When Johnny Comes Marching Home

    Hindemith: Symphonic Metamorphosis on themes of Carl Maria von Weber

    Moncayo: Huapango

    Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances, Op. 45

    Resphigi: Gli uccelli

    Revueltas: Sensamaya

    Vaughan-Williams: Fantasia on Greensleeves

    Walton: Crown Imperial; Spitfire- Prelude & Fugue

    Wiren: Serenade for String Orchestra, Op. 11

     

    The smaller orchestral piece begins to come into its own in this period and just finding a few that are worth one’s time is quite difficult.  I’ll address some of these alphabetically.  Leroy Anderson’s music had become an almost iconic part of Christmas time, but the other works listed here are also significant pieces of pops-style art music.  The Barber works are among the composer’s finest music and certainly encourage exploration of his music.  The first Bartok I heard was his Concerto for Orchestra and it was a significant experience for a young listener.  The other work listed here is equally fascinating and holds, for me, connections to the way it was used in a theater production of Richard III.  Britten’s piece is fairly innocuous, but a great introduction to classical music.  The two brief Copland pieces are great works with Quiet City growing to be a personal favorite the more I hear it.  Gershwin’s concert music is always great fun and his essay here is an iconic example of his music.  The Hindemith was my introduction to the composer and remains a personal favorite.  Moncayo’s little orchestral piece is probably my single favorite work on this list and one which I wish got more play.  Resphigi’s little bird suite is a guilty pleasure!  I heard the Walton Spitfire piece on a Boston Pops concert but had to wait several years to finally get a recording of it, but it opened the door for an interest in his music, along with Malcolm Arnold.

     

    Favorite Solo Chamber Music

    Bartok: String Quartets No. 4-6; Contrasts

    Gershwin: Preludes for piano

    Hindemith: Sonata for bassoon & piano

    Messiaen: Vingt Regards sur L'enfant Jesus

     

    Bartok’s final string quartets are fascinating essays in this genre filled with some very personal writing and hallmark’s of the composer’s style.  Messiaen’s set of pieces is another of those amazing modern explorations of piano writing.  Quite a contrast to Gershwin!  And no self-respecting bassoonist could leave out Hindemith’s great little sonata, a personal favorite of mine since my high school days.

     

    Favorite Works with Vocalists/Chorus

    Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915

    Durufle: Requiem, Op. 9

    Orff: Carmina Burana

    Poulenc: Stabat Mater

    R. Strauss: Vier letzte Lieder

    Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms: Mass

                         

    There are many examples of great choral writing in the second quarter of the 20th Century, but Orff’s work is perhaps the most familiar of the lot from its oft-used appearance, and imitation, in a host of Hollywood films.  Richard Strauss’ orchestral lieder are among the composer’s most amazing works and a great way to ease into his vocal writing style for new listeners.  These too are very personal pieces with great emotional depth.  On the other end of that spectrum are two more restrained works by Barber and the beautiful Requiem of Durufle.  The Poulenc I more recently had a chance to hear and it has really grown on me as has much of the composer’s music over the years.  The two Stravinsky pieces are simply among the composers great Neo-classical works of the period.

     

    Favorite Opera

    Gershwin: Porgy & Bess

    Puccini: Turandot

    Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

     

    I was trying to think of what operas cast their spell on me the most over the years and whittled it down to three for now.  Gershwin’s opera is required listening for any American opera fan.  The piece is filled with amazing music and drama—don’t let the horrid recent Broadway “adaptation” fool you (perhaps one of the most historically and musically misinformed productions ever!).  The Houston Grand Opera recording is the one to track down to hear this piece done well.  Puccini’s opera is perhaps, for me, one of his most engaging works both dramatically and musically.  The same might be said of Shostakovich’s work, which here becomes one important stylistic signpost in his writing.

     

    Works for Wind Band

    Fillmore: Americans We

    Grainger: Lincolnshire Posy

    Reed: Russian Christmas Music

     

    This period sees a rise in wind band music and while there is plenty to recommend here, I wanted to focus on three very different types of music for this section.  The first is a representative march by Henry Fillmore, one of the great march composers in the legacy of Sousa.  Percy Grainger’s Lincolnshire Posy is one of the seminal pieces in the literature and deserves a spot in everyone’s music library.  As a young band student, the music of Alfred Reed was becoming more popular and one of his fascinating  pieces to hear, and play, was his Russian Christmas Music which continues to appear on concert programs to this day.

     

    Important Film Music

    Bliss: Shape of Things To Come

    Chaplin: City Lights

    Herrmann: Citizen Kane

    Huppertz: Metropolis

    Korngold:  The Adventures of Robin Hood; The Sea Hawk

    Newman: Captain from Castile

    Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky

    Rozsa: Spellbound

    Satie: "Cinema Music" from "Relache"

    Steiner: King Kong; Gone With the Wind

    Thomson:  The Plow that Broke the Plains

    Waxman: The Bride of Frankenstein; Sunset Boulevard

     

    One aspect missing from the first list in this series of possible library building essays, was film music.  I wanted to try and cull together a list of important scores from this period that provided a cross-section of styles.  There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of amazing works for this new developing musical area but these provide interesting windows into this musical genre.  Early scores are always worth checking out to see just how different they were from what we think of as film music.  To hear what scores were like in the early days of silent movies, it is worth tracking down music by Joseph Carl Breil (The Birth of a Nation).  Later works like Satie’s, and especially Huppertz’s score, provide interesting windows into the way modernist music entered into the possible musical spheres of film.  Chaplin and Bliss provide windows into the European Germanic concert world alongside that of musical theater, and perhaps even a bit of vaudeville.  It is in the work though of composers like Korngold, Steiner, and Waxman, where we begin to see the post-romantic approaches assert themselves.  Steiner tends to get sort shrift with his multiple use of quotation in many of his scores, but this is rather groundbreaking in some ways and on great display in Gone With the Wind.  Prokofiev’s classic film score is worth hearing a different European style that would also be adapted into American film music.  Alfred Newman has a host of great scores, and my fondness for the one chosen here has to do a lot with the great thematic material, and the famous march that appears in it.  The appearance of film noir styles is perfectly captured in Rozsa’s Spellbound.  We can hear some of the Americana styles appear in Virgil Thomson’s documentary scores in the 1930s and Herrmann’s Citizen Kane does bear a closer connection to that scoring style than that of the more familiar music of Aaron Copland.  The two Waxman pieces show the versatility of this composer who started his career with an iconic score that would inform Universal monster features for decades, and yet his grasp of jazz, from his earlier days playing in German bands, would literally explode in the exciting score for Sunset Boulevard.