Gallagher: Symphony No. 2; Quiet Reflections
London Symphony Orchestra/JoAnn Falletta
Naxos 8.559768
Total Time: 75:08
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

An earlier release, reviewed here a few years ago, focused on a number of American composer Jack Gallagher’s shorter pieces.  It was an excellent overview and introduction to his music and style and featured this same great orchestra and conductor.  For this second disc, Naxos has moved into supporting a significant concert work and a brief “encore” of sorts to fill out this disc.  Gallagher’s second symphony, begun in 2010 and completed in 2013, is a massive symphonic work running just over an hour.  Its subtitle “Ascendant” provides a slight glimpse into the way thematic ideas and the triumph of the human spirit may aspire.  Its sheer length will certainly make some think of Mahler, Shostakovich, or Corigliano, though its musical language is a post-modern “romantic” harmony not without modern flashes making it an intriguing and interesting work that is easy to enter into and explore.

The symphony opens with a horn fanfare that immediately pushes into a fast-paced first section that continues to explore this upward-moving idea.  Ideas are tossed about the orchestra in clear lines of imitation between voices.  A more “exotic” oboe theme provides some lyrical contrast in this sonata-form opening movement.  The movement’s central section continues this rapid tossing about of motives across its 20-minute span.  There are times in this movement where one feels like the ghost of Petrushka is not far behind in the way certain orchestral colors come together, and even a veiled quote by trumpets.  But sometimes the string writing will also feel as if it is pulling from other grand traditions as all these elements strive upwards.  Thematic material will consistently be employed to help pull the piece together as the ideas are shared in brilliant instrumentation and orchestral color.  The second movement, marked “Playful”, is a delightful scherzo with a central section that feels almost minimalistic with its repeated small motives.  The overall form moves through five sections and then back out again connected by short ritornello sections and with the third idea not recurring later.  A few compositional “devices” that would be discovered upon looking closer at a score provide some fine touches.  The opening of the third, and slow movement, is a beautiful atmospheric piece with fluttering colors and murmuring strings.  It features some slightly more intense thematic design, more angular and into higher registral string writing.  Somewhat impressionistic in its style, the music gradually becomes a poignant and evocative meditation with many moments of beauty.   The finale is in five different tempo sections that reflects back on ideas heard earlier in the work beginning with a mysterious opening and leading to a chorale and exciting coda.  This is the movement that feels like a modern Shostakovich/Harris structure.

For a bit of contrast, the disc closes with a 1996 work, Quiet Reflections.  The piece is a slower meditative work flirting with a blend of Impressionistic writing with touches of Americana.  At times it feels as if it could be lifted from a dramatic film score by Elmer Bernstein, or Alex North, with touches of Copland.  The result is an often lyrical and beautifully-orchestrated tone poem of sorts.  The piece is another of those wonderful shorter orchestral pieces of accessible music that matches well with the earlier disc of Gallagher’s orchestral music.

Once again, JoAnn Falletta’s commitment to modern orchestral repertoire is exemplary.  It is beyond rare for a major symphony to tackle a new work of this magnitude and with the resulting level of excellence and interpretation one gets with the London Symphony Orchestra.  However, it is the sheer exuberant skill in the writing that makes the piece work.  It many respects it is as if the symphony pays homage to the great performances of the LSO that Gallagher appreciated as a student.  Suggestions of 20^th Century music are not as overt as pure quotation music, but seem to float through the textures.  In some respects, it is as if they are reflecting on some of the great cultural achievements of the past century that helped provide light and hope to the world.  All this said, there is a lot in the symphony that can be returned to pick up some of the greater detail and suggestive ideas.  But, the real reason is that it is simply an excellent modern work that sometimes seems to reflect a bit of Stravinsky’s modernism more than other elements, but with a beautifully evocative slow movement we come into an almost cinematic soundscape.  This is another great release in Naxos’ continuing support of modern American music and an accessible new symphony worth ones time.  Pick both this and the earlier one up if you still have not done so for a wonderful introduction to a great symphonic American voice.

Bartok: Kossuth; Two Portraits; Suite
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra/JoAnn Falletta
Naxos 8.573307
Total Time:  69:42
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

One of the great aspects of Naxos’ recording plans is that they find pairings of good regional orchestras and begin exploring repertoire of all sorts based often on the ensembles music director interests.  In JoAnn Falletta, the label has certainly managed to begin improving on some of the performances recorded in Eastern Europe back in the 1990s.  Under Falletta’s leadership, the Buffalo Philharmonic has managed to gain an impressive foothold on disc with a host of familiar and less familiar repertoire across.  The music of Bela Bartok is one of the great individual voices of the 20^th Century.  His final works from the latter 1930s and 1940s have cemented themselves into the standard repertoire of many orchestras.  There was a time when tracking down his earlier orchestral music was a bit more difficult.  His intriguing symphonic poem, Kossuth, was among the rarer finds with a fabulous performance available on the old Sefel label years ago.  Ivan Fischer’s 1998 Philips release is worth tracking down with its equally fine pairing of the Concerto for Orchestra.

The present release pulls together three relatively rarer early works of Bartok’s from the first decade of the 20^th Century.  What makes Kossuth intriguing is that it is Bartok’s first real foray into orchestral writing in 1903 at the age of 22.  The piece shows its roots in German Romanticism and certainly has the recent tone poems of Richard Strauss firmly in tow.  The work is based on the life of the great Hungarian freedom fighter, Lajos Kossuth, who fought for independence from the Austrian empire in 1848.  The ten sections begin with a thematic layout of Kossuth’s theme representing his character.  The exciting central battle section is perhaps among the more impressive moments of this score.  Also worth noting are some of the Eastern harmonic ideas and folk-like motives that already are showing some fascination for the composer—though still being treated with a 19^th-Century ear.  The string writing is certainly reminiscent of Strauss in this work.  It would have been nice though to have these movements separated track wise, though seamless, so one could better study the work.

At the center of the release are the Two Portraits, Op. 5, Sz. 37.  The piece for violin and orchestra came after a violin concerto that was written for a young violinist Bartok was in love with, only to be rejected and lose his score as well (it resurfaced in 1959 when she died).  And so, in 1909 he returned to a work for solo and orchestra perhaps addressing this heartbreak apparent in the subtitles for the movements:  “Ideal” and “Grotesque”.  The first is actually a reuse of the opening movement of the violin concerto.  The second is borrowed from his “Bagatelle No. 13”.  The result is a set of movements with a sort of idée fixe technique.  Thus it provides a bit of a connection actually to the early symphonic poem.  The first movement’s solo line is certainly a sensually lyrical one with great impassioned ideas though seemingly “frustrated” as the music progresses.  The second movement is actually the more interesting of the two with its interesting rhythmic energy and more angular writing.

The final piece on the disc is the Suite No. 1, Op. 3, Sz. 60.  The five-movement work explores a variety of Hungarian folk song material, but is most notable for Bartok’s intriguing orchestral choices.  The work was composed in 1905 and later revised in 1920.  The tie in here is the use of the Austrian national hymn as one of the source melodies used in the work.  The overall sound of this work is quite striking to that of the previous one as we are truly back in that late German Romantic approach albeit with a few personal touches.  The result is a work that sounds more like a 1930s film score where one would be hard pressed to know it was by Bartok.  That does not diminish the music’s charm and engaging material.

Falletta’s performance of the Kossuth is fairly spot on with Bartok interpreters.  The strings feel like they could use a few more stands, but that is more due to the music rather than the orchestra.  Intonation in high passages is excellent and the big climaxes are well balanced.  The resulting program here is really a great traversal of these early pieces with excellent performances that honor the period and style of the music without trying to force the later Bartok into them as sometimes can happen.