Spirit of the American Range: Works by
Antheil, Copland, and Piston
Oregon Symphony/Carlos Kalmar
Pentatone Records 5186 481
Total Time:  65:21
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Over the last couple of years, the Oregon Symphony, under its Music Director Carlos Kalmar, have released impressive recordings of significant 20^th Century masterpieces.  Having explored English repertoire, he turns now to three important American works by equally diverse composers.  The title of this disc, Spirit of the American Range, seems a bit odd as other than possible sparse landscapes suggested by Copland’s third symphony, American music enthusiasts may be a bit surprised at what actually shows up on this release spanning two decades of musical history.  The title aside, each of the works here are important 20^th Century contributions and worthy of wider exposure, still (!), and with the sort of excellent sound Pentatone has captured in the past it bears promise from the start.  The pairing of the pieces here is though in and of itself unique and oddly there are few good recordings of any of them, though the ones that there are are still pretty hard to beat.  The Copland has fared best, and personal preferences here lean toward Leonard Bernstein’s last recording of the work (on Deutsche Grammophon), and Mata’s with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.  The live recording made in April, 2013, and January, 2014, perhaps also allows for a bit more energy and excitement in the performances.

Walter Piston (1874-1976) is one of the great composers and educators of the 20^th Century.  His impact on his Harvard composition students (as diverse as Leroy Anderson to Elliot Carter!) was given further reach by publication of significant texts on orchestration, harmony, and counterpoint.  The ballet, The Incredible Flutist, was undertaken at the request of Arthur Fiedler in 1938 for the Boston Symphony and choreographer Hans Wiener (aka Jan Veen).  The present recording is of the more oft-performed 11-movement suite, albeit presented as one track which makes it more difficult to access a particular movement.  From the start, the orchestra is on superb display with crisp sound that allows textures to cut through appropriately with excellent articulation.  The different layers of Piston’s orchestration are thus given real room.  The shifts in character for the suite also work equally well.  Those unfamiliar with Piston’s work will likely be surprised from some of the more Romantic moments here that appear almost the same way as his most famous student, Leonard Bernstein, would do.  At any rate, this is an exciting performance that captures the spirit of Piston’s music, though one hopes maybe Kalmar will tackle one of the pithier symphonies some day.

The Ballet Mecanique is perhaps George Antheil’s (1900-1959) most famous, or infamous, work.  It caused a riot at its performance (oh, the days when the arts did such a thing!).  It was preceded in the program by the work recorded here, A Jazz Symphony.  Premiered in 1927 it is an amazing pastiche of musical styles from the period coupled with modernist sensibilities.  Here it becomes a little buffer between the two slightly more serious works.  If the work is new to most listeners, it is worth noting just how sporadic it might feel.  On one hand it is like walking down a busy American city hearing all these different musical ideas floating out on the street.  Somehow Antheil ties all these threads together with a thematic idea and rhythmic motif that move through the work.  This is at times gradually more dissonant music that comes at a time of other Jazz experiments by Les Six (especially Milhaud).  Why it is not performed much is anyone’s guess, other than it is somewhat hard to pull off.  Accents and intonation are the culprits when things go awry and that is not a problem at all here as the orchestra relishes the challenge.  From Tin Pan Alley to silent movie and Broadway romance, everything is here for the taking.

The more monumental work on the disc is Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony.  Begun in 1944 as a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation, the piece certainly is quite evocative of the open spaces and simpler times perhaps anticipated at the end of the WWII.  Of course, the final movement is more familiar as it houses the Fanfare for the Common Man that Copland had composed for the Cincinnati Symphony and which was relatively unknown at the time.  It serves here to mark perhaps the Allied Victory.  The composer’s acolytes were more than willing to quickly brand this as the best “American Symphony” ever written.  It certainly is one of the finest, but one can think of many equally fine works of the periods before, during, and after where the same could be said.  Such was the cult of Copland for the time and it was this style that he would embrace most successfully over the next decade.

The sound for the symphony seems to back up a bit to capture the larger grandeur of the ensemble.  One thing that is often hard to bring off here is the contrast between these long, open lyric lines, and the more angular punctuations that are flung about the orchestra instigated mostly by brass.  The opening movement feels a bit breezy at times, Kalmar knocks a full minute from the work compared to Bernstein and even Mata.  Somehow, this helps make the ending work as it slowly calms things down after its more intense middle section.  It is almost as if we pan out to take another look at this American landscape.  The second movement is one of Copland’s most rustic-sounding reminiscent of the Martha Graham ballets.  This moves along at a good pace again with articulation and forward motion helping to shape the excitement in this movement that sometimes veers into Prokofiev territory.  He will make up for that later with a slightly longer third movement that features intensely high string writing—though the ensemble acquit themselves well.  This is a languid reflection after all the previous energy that sometimes seems to meander a bit too long, but the beauty lies in discerning the development of the primary motivic idea that will soon explode in the fourth movement’s fanfare.  Sometimes too it can feel a bit kitchen-sinkish as even a little Appalachian Spring and a few other stylistic tropes that Copland would return to, appear in this languid balletic movement.  The fanfare in this performance does not feel tacked on, as it can sometimes seem, but does feel like a natural growth out of the opening of the movement and a final true statement of the symphony’s thematic motifs now in all of its splendor.  The conclusion is equally exciting. Sometimes it can feel that it is a bit overlong, and Kalmar does try to move things along just enough to prevent that from happening.

While these timings seem unusual, what is notable is that Kalmar interprets the lines and drama of the work creating a freshness to the music which is further aided by the response of the orchestra to his direction.  The result is another valid interpretation of this work with a bit more excitement and shaping that seems far more faithful to the text.  Kalmar also makes less of the sections where others have added bigger ritards.  A table of comparison for timings of two personal favorite performances is provided below.

When music making is this good, the only thing left to really lament is that there is not at least one more short work here to bring the disc to a little longer play time (though 65 minutes is certainly nothing to complain about!).  These are three somewhat disparate works, but the goal here is to also help music lovers discern how these are all still examples of American music with common sounds that indelibly link them to a distinct musical voice that has its roots, at least in these three composers, in the 1920s and the shift to French-influences rather than the more Germanic ones of the previous generation of American composers.  Three great works by an orchestra that is being given fabulous sound to boot.

 Saint-Saens: Symphony Nos. 1 & 2; Phaeton
Malmo Symphony Orchestra/Marc Soustrot
Naxos 8.573138
Total Time:  66:06
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

After a recent release of the Organ Symphony, Naxos reveals it is in the process of a complete cycle of Camille Saint-Saens’ symphonies albeit in Malmo, Sweden.  Conductor Marc Soustrot is a noted interpreter of French music  and seems like an apt choice to take on most of these lesser-known works.  The first volume launches off sequentially with two early works from the 1850s and a later symphonic poem to complete the program.

Saint-Saens early in his career was often compared to Mendelssohn and his first symphony, completed when he was only 17, certainly takes its cues from the Germanic side of the symphonic repertoire to that point.  The piece is well-constructed, and admittedly a bit derivative at times, though no less charming as well in spots.  The opening adagio theme will become a primary theme in the following Allegro.  The second movement is a nice “Marche-Scherzo” demonstrating some early playfulness.  The slow movement has its moments of beauty as well with harp and muted strings preparing us for the first gorgeous theme presented by clarinet.  The finale increases the orchestral forces and includes a fugal section, some Wagnerian nods in the early thematic statement, and a triumphant finale.  All demonstrating the young composer’s grasp of musical technique and orchestration as well as form.  The result is a competent early work with often engaging themes, especially the bucolic one introduced by oboe in the second movement.  Soustrot finds a bit more engaging beauty in the slow movement here which works quite well (playing out almost two minutes longer than Martinon’s class interpretation).  It is indeed the heart of this work and perhaps one of the main reasons to return to it again over time.

Seven years passed before Saint-Saens attempted his second essay in the form moving now to a minor key.  Here the inner movements are reversed from the first holding the scherzo as the penultimate movement.  The piece was written in 1859 and dedicated to the director of the Concerts Populair, Jules Pasdeloup.  It would not be performed for several years (possibly in 1862, though perhaps later).  Though the orchestral forces are slightly smaller, minus some brass, harp, and percussion, it still has a few non-conventional surprises.  The first of these is the inclusion of a fugue as the structural foundation for the first movement, something which the organist-composer was quite familiar with and which demonstrates a bit of compositional fortitude.  The opening still features a variety of delightful examples of orchestral color as the idea is moved through different solo lines.  The slow movement again is that center of beauty with a gorgeous English horn added to the texture.  The dancelike scherzo provides a nice contrast with a tarantella and interesting accents (that third symphony will further develop this and perhaps has some roots here).  The opening of the fourth movement takes its cue from this scurrying dance though it is interrupted by a brief slower section before the finale.  Saint-Saens also begins to explore this idea of thematic transformation and cyclic recurrence as the piece winds down.  Soustrot’s performance essentially times out quite on the same track as Martinon’s and may have a slight edge here due to the sonic support he receives and even the orchestra is a bit better as well providing excellent articulation and matching the style quite well.

Some additional icing comes with the 1873 symphonic poem, Phaeton.  The piece was somewhat panned as being too programmatic when first performed—a comment as much about its Germanic “influences” after the defeat of France in the Franco Prussian War.  Regardless, there is a lot of excellent dramatic musical depictions here from galloping horses to thunderbolts all moving to an exciting finish.  It remains one of the composer’s more oft-performed examples of this 19^th Century form next to perhaps the Danse macabre.

Soustrot does not have a great deal of competition here in these works but the standard to beat is Jean Martinon’s EMI recordings from the 1970s.  The sound here is simply wonderful and the music truly shines as best as it can.  The Malmo players approach these works with commitment and sincerity enjoying the wonderful themes and perhaps appreciating where all these orchestral touches will lead the composer in the future.  It is not difficult to recommend these performances then for the musical curious early pieces that they are and for many beautiful moments along the way.  Whether the cycle will continue to become a modern touchstone for the complete symphonies remains to be seen.