Search - John Knowles Paine, Dudley Buck, Edward MacDowell :: Kenneth Klein, Conductor

A Cross-Section of American Music at the Turn of the Century

M. C. Passarella | Lawrenceville, GA | 08/22/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"All the composers represented on this disc were infinitely more familiar and popular in their own day, of course, but recordings have managed to introduce modern listeners to most of them, Dudley Buck probably being the least known today. So it's especially nice to be able to recommend his work as the most immediately attractive and successful of the lot. It's successful because it does perfectly what it sets out to do: create a clever fantasy based on a patriotic tune. And it is clever, with interesting harmonic twists and turns and a clearly tongue-in-cheek feeling that would make it the perfect companion, on a summer concert program, for William Schuman's orchestral version of the Ives "Variations on America." It may not be quite as loopy and irreverent as the Ives, but it is still fun.



The other works on the disc are all more or less serious in intent with the exception of Carpenter's "Skyscrapers," an early example of orchestral jazz. As a ballet, it might be interesting to watch, with its irregular dance rhythms and quotations from popular song. A good producer-choreographer team could probably make a colorful affair of it onstage. On CD, it comes across as a pastiche with little memorable melodic content. It's nice to hear occasionally, especially for the interesting orchestration (including parts for banjo, air whistle, two pianos and a big percussion section), but the truth is it pales besides the efforts of Milhaud, Gershwin, Antheil, et al.



Of the other works on the CD, I find McDowell's "Lamia" the most interesting. It is clearly a high-Romantic creation in the manner of Liszt's tone poems. Because McDowell's melodic lines tend to be longer and more sophisticated than Liszt's, the work reminds me more of the French followers of Liszt, especially Chausson and Duparc in their tone poems.



John Knowles Paine is really a very impressive composer. His Second Symphony and Mass are remarkable creations for a composer working in America in the 1860s and 1870s. They certainly show their European roots, but they have a strange, individual strain of melancholy that is typically 19th-century American, maybe typically New England. Perhaps it has to do with the Civil War, perhaps with the passing of the glory days of New England, when that region was the chief arbiter of matters intellectual and artistic in America. Perhaps it's just J. K. Paine himself, but this melancholy is greatly in evidence in the "Prelude to Oedipus Tyrannus," a brooding, seething work in the manner of Brahms's "Tragic Overture." The use of the orchestra is adroit, the working out expert. It just lacks the spark of genius that would make you want to hear it more than a few times.



For me, the least interesting work is Foote's Suite in F, though it is probably the most often performed piece represented here. Again, the European influences are clear, but the work still has an American feel to it, coming as it does after Dvorak told American composers to turn to their own music for ideas. The melodies have that open, hymn-like quality that Ives explored in his symphonies and other orchestral works. It's a very pretty work, well put together and with attractive melodies, especially the finale, which seems like a cross between a fugue and a barn dance. But when I hear the piece, I can't help but think of the wonderful string music of Grieg and Elgar, among others. Foote presents no competition at all to the wonderful "Holberg Suite" or the "Introduction and Allegro."



If I've given the idea that here is just a bunch of second-rate American music, that is not my intention at all. I want to be quite truthful about the importance of the works contained on this CD. None of them changed the face of music or will ever be demanded to be heard by the concert-going public. But as a cross-section of American music around the turn of the century, this is a very interesting disc. It's very well and sympathetically performed and nicely recorded with a bright, clear sound picture that is just a touch two-dimensional. This disc is certainly worth a try for the adventurous--and a must for the serious student of American music.

"

Prelude to Oedipus Tyrranus

Stephen Shotwell | Belmont CA | 01/30/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The first work in this collection, the prelude to Oedipus Tyrranus by John Knowles Paine, is a most compelling piece of music, not to be missed.



The structure is tight, the music is terse -- all very classical, but with waves of passionate declamation that astonish. A churning figuration courses through the movement, rather like a locomotive that cannot be stopped, or shall we say, like fate? A powerful combination of music both elemental and emotional, which is, I think, a fitting evocation of Greek tragedy."