CLASSICAL
AMERICAN VOICES: JOHN ANTES: Trio in D minor for Two Violins and Cello, Op. 3, No. 2; GERSHWIN: Lullaby for String Quartet; BARBER: String Quartet, Op. 11; RUTH CRAWFORD SEEGER: String Quartet 1931; BERNSTEIN: Sonata for Clarinet and Piano; JOAN TOWER: A Gift for Piano, Flute, Clarinet, Bassoon, and Horn. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Available as a download from iTunes.
UNG-AANG TALAY
'It is fairly obvious that no country on Earth has produced so many kinds of music as America, and the idea that American music is all of one family has taken time to crystallize," write Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center artistic directors David Finckel and Wu Han in an introductory note to this recorded concert, and then proceed to show us what they mean with a rich programme full of diversity and surprises. The music offered here ranges from a string trio composed during the 18th century to a suite for piano and winds written last year. Each work sets the stage for the next.
Before hearing the string trio performed here, I had known John Antes only as a name, one of the earliest "classical" composer born in what is now the United States. He studied music as part of his early education in Pennsylvania, according to Dr Richard Rodda's notes to this programme, but went to Europe when he was 24 and stayed overseas for the rest of his colourful life - he was one of the first Christian missionaries to Egypt and applied himself as an inventor in his spare time. All of his music that has survived was composed in Europe, including the 1780 string trio played here.
On the evidence of this piece, Antes was a composer to reckon with. The fast outer movements, in particular, use its D-minor tonality with an aggressiveness that suggests some of Haydn's sterner quartet movements. The musical fabric is very busy, but every note counts and musicians Nelson Lee, Meg Freivogel, and Daniel McDonough play the hell out of it.
George Gershwin's Lullaby for String Quartet was written in 1919, which makes it one of his earlier works. His astonishing gift for melody was already in place. The appropriately rocking theme heard right from the beginning immediately sticks in the memory. But in this piece he almost does it to death, repeating it to the point where it becomes monotonous, perhaps no bad thing in a lullaby that is supposed to do its job. The rather twee ending doesn't help, either, but the 8:45-minute piece does leave you with one good tune and an view of Gershwin's style in its beginnings.
Samuel Barber's lone string quartet, on the other hand, is one of his masterpieces. Listeners hearing it for the first time smile happily as the Molto adagio second movement begins, because this is the original form of the ubiquitous Adagio for Strings, one of the most popular of all classical pieces, American or otherwise.
That movement has gotten most of the air play, but the entire quartet is on an equal level of inspiration. Listen to the range of emotions expressed in the mere eight minutes of the opening Molto allegro e appassionato, and the way intensity repeatedly yields to more inward music. Even the great outburst after 5:30 is quickly placated, but its energy is sufficient to stage a powerful comeback in the last movement. The performance here is very good, warmer and less tightly-drawn than the Emerson Quartet's account on DG (on a programme that also includes the two Ives quartets).
Ruth Crawford Seeger, in her earlier years, was a musical innovator on a part with Charles Ives and Carl Ruggles, and the string quartet recorded here, composed in 1931, is perhaps her finest work. Later in life she focused on collecting American folk music (her son Pete Seeger brought it to a huge audience), but continued to compose.
Like Barber's quartet, the Seeger piece has a famous slow movement, although its celebrity as come for a very different reason. Throbbing, sustained tones come in on top of each other to create a pulsating band of dense sound that predicts what composers like Penderecki, Ligeti, and Xenakis would be doing decades later, although effect is much different. As its long crescendo, it becomes one of the most plaintive and lonely pieces of music in the modern classical repertoire, until the tension blows it apart into a spray of musical sparks and fragments. Like Barber's Adagio, this movement was also scored for string orchestra. The remaining three movements, built on very complicated structural ideas, sound avant-garde even by today's standards. The rapid-fire dialogue of the four instruments in the opening Rubate assai might have inspired Elliott Carter.
It is sometimes said that Leonard Bernstein's gift was for Broadway, and that his concert scores are not in anywhere near the same league. To disabuse yourself of this idea, listen to this 10-minute sonata for clarinet and piano, written in 1941-2 when the composer was young. It drips with charm, and there are passages in the episodic second movement (after 1:24, for example, and especially from about 5:30 until the end) where the popular theatre Bernstein in very much in evidence. It is a slight piece, not on a part with large-scale works like the Serenade for Violin and Orchestra, but you should enjoy it as much as the audience obviously does here.
Joan Tower is one of the best living American composers. Her Sequoia for orchestra is a high point of late 20th-century concert music, but then all of her work sound inspired and fastidiously crafted. That is certainly true of A Gift, the chamber piece performed here.
DG's notes explain that it was commissioned by a music lover in Portland, Oregon for his sister. Tower based the work on the Rogers & Hart song, My Funny Valentine, but in a very personal way. She explains in the note that she doesn't quote the song, but employs it "as subliminal musical idea, often floating in the background, sometimes forgotten completely, occasionally rising in fragments to conscious awareness."Tower's compositional style is distinctly modern, and if you weren't told of the music's being haunted by the Rogers & Hart song, you wouldn't perceive it. But once you start listening of it, contours from the song, especially the "simple progression of adjacent scale notes" that Tower refers to in her explanation, are everywhere. I felt them especially in the two middle movements, one associated, according to its title, with song, the other with feeling. A strong work to conclude a compelling programme of American concern music in its great variety.
Recorded sound is very good even in MP3 form, especially when heard through Westone UM2 earphones.
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