A Landmark Recording of One of America's Master Composers
J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 09/04/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Any number of things make this 2CD set (together totaling just over 80 minutes and being sold for the price of one CD) a must-have for anyone interested in the American symphony. Of course, first and foremost is the music; we have three of Vincent Persichetti's symphonies played and recorded nicely by David Alan Miller and the Albany Symphony. Persichetti was surely one of our most assured mid-twentieth century composers. Second, two of these symphonies are receiving their first recordings. (The Fourth, also recorded here, has long been available in a wonderful performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. I was delighted to pull out and listen to the CD reissue of that recording and discover that the current recording is very nearly its equal, and certainly in better, more up-to-date sound.) There are informative and gracefully written booklet notes by Ray Bono. Until I got to the end of the notes, where Bono's name was listed, I had thought I was probably reading the words of Walter Simmons, an expert on Persichetti's music; he is the author of the Grove Dictionary entry on the composer and the writer of the strongly recommended book about six American neo-romantic composers (not including Persichetti, alas) called 'Voices in the Wilderness.' To have mistaken Bono's words for those of Simmons is a compliment to Mr Bono.
Persichetti's music is characterized by a mixture of what he called 'gritty' (or 'gravelly') and 'graceful' music. It also tends to be concise and formally almost Classical; he made no secret about his admiration for the music of Mozart and Haydn. His sense of melody was generally diatonic and virtually Italianate. (No surprise on either account: his father was Italian, his mother a native of Bonn -- indeed his middle name 'Ludwig' was in honor of another Bonn native, Beethoven.) At the same time he had a quirky and generally infectious rhythmic sense and a kind of geniality (a reflection, it is said, of his personality) that comes across plainly in his music. His harmonies could vary from the simplest triadic sort to virtual atonality, but always, always there was a 'Persichetti sound' that becomes apparent within seconds of hearing any of his music. There tends to be a mixture of major and minor thirds, frequent use of open fourths and fifths, often moving in parallel, sounding a bit like the 'American' sound of Copland. His skillful and effective polyphony is rather like Hindemith's. His writing for brass, woodwinds and percussion is masterful and like no one else's; indeed, he wrote some of the cornerstone American works for wind band, including his Sixth Symphony for winds. His 'Divertimento for Band' is surely one of the greatest modern masterpieces for that combination of instruments.
Written between 1946 (Symphony No. 3) and 1958 (the one-movement Symphony No. 7, the 'Liturgical') these three works are in Persichetti's mature style. They do indeed alternate passages of lyrical beauty and those of rhythmic élan and granitic harmonies. His fast movements tend to be rollicking, but always with a sense of serious purpose as well. His slow movements are often songlike, and make no mistake, Persichetti could write achingly lovely melodies, usually clothed in beautiful if idiosyncratic harmonies. At times there is a kind of awkwardness -- as in the second movement of the Fourth -- that is both endearing and oddly engaging. There are patches of gorgeous chorale writing, reminding one at times of similar passages of William Schuman, that can build to wrenching emotional climaxes, as in the end of the finale of the Third. And everywhere is evidence of his polyphonic inventiveness.
Although I've known and loved the Fourth for almost forty years, I quickly came to have the same strong attraction to the other two symphonies performed here. This issue is an important addition to the Persichetti discography.
Strongly recommended.
Two CDs: CD1 - 55:12; CD2 - 25:02
Scott Morrison"
Essential Symphonist
Allan J. Cronin | Alameda, CA | 01/12/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Vincent Persichetti along with his colleague William Schuman taught at Julliard in the 50's, 60's and 70's. Together they each produced several symphonies and other orchestral works characterized by brilliant orchestration with amazing brass and percussion writing and modern-inflected tonality. While Schuman's works are deservedly better known, Persichetti's are essential works in the canon of mid-twentieth century symphonies. His fourth symphony has been recorded before but has long been out of print. And this appears to be the first recordings of the 3rd and 7th symphonies. His 6th symphony for band, 5th for strings and 8th are his best known works but if you like those works and the likes of Schuman you will not be disappointed. Then performances by David Alan Miller are wonderful as is the recording. Highly recommended."
Well-crafted and enjoyable, but little that really makes you
Discophage | France | 03/01/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)
"I hope to offend no-one if I state that, among 20th Century American symphonists, Persichetti has established a standing in the second-tier rather than in the first one. Naturally everybody will discuss who belongs to the "first-league", and objective criterions are difficult to define: possibly number of performances, number of citations in the textbooks - not figures I have access to - and number of recordings. When you look at the discographies, the only Americans to have had more than a couple of recordings of their respective complete symphonic output would be Ives, Copland, Barber and Bernstein, to which may be added a few individual symphonies (Hanson's early ones, Schuman's and Harris' respective 3rd come to mind; Persichetti's 6th certainly qualifies, but only, I would suggest, by dint of being written for Band). Still, to that list I would add, purely subjectively and given their significance in the history of American 20th Century music, Piston, Sessions, Harris, Schuman and possibly Mennin. Despite the accumulative process borne of the elapsed years, the recording industry (and presumably the record buyers?) has been shamefully unwelcoming to the composers of this century. Many of their symphonies have had only one recording (and oftentimes it is an old one too) and some even none (for instance four among Harris' thirteen numbered ones if my count is right).
So why not Persichetti, despite an output as large as anyone else's (with nine works in the genre - although the two first ones were withdrawn)? Hearing the three symphonies collated on this 2-CD set helps understand why (# 3 and 7 are premiere recordings by the way, and #4 is in fact the third, after Ormandy's antique version from 1954 and James de Preist more recent recording on Delos, American Contrasts). They are serious efforts, well-crafted and enjoyable - but I hear very little in them that I find particularly original and that I don't have the impression of having heard already in the symphonies of Copland, Schuman and Mennin (and I find some passages in the Third are also strikingly reminiscent of Hindemith). They are content to follow the moods, rules and tricks of American symphonic writing so typical in those years - the late forties to late fifties - but they do follow them very effectively. So, in the Third Symphony from 1946, you get the dramatic and menacing 1st movement ("Somber") followed the playfuyl, vigorous and carefree scherzo ("Spirited") with a more appeased middle section shortly flirting with the sentimental; then comes the expected lyrical, wistful and pastoral 3rd movement with English horn then flute over hushed strings, and the dynamically animated finale (with trilling flutes, brass fanfares and typical dotted eighth-sixteenth rhythms evocative of Hindemith), with a middle section of delicate woodwind filigree, followed by a passage of great lyrical intensity on the strings reminiscent of Harris, just before the return of the dynamic music, announced by a wild timpani passage. In 1946 Piston and Barber had composed their respective 2nd, Schuman his 5th , Harris his 6th, Sessions presented his 2nd, Mennin and Copland their 3rd.
The Fourth Symphony is slightly more original in its outlook and compositional processes, especially in its overall "grazioso" nature, its mercurial character (with instant changes of moods) and in the delicate neo-classical filigree of woodwinds, brass or strings that crops up in each movement, pointing both to Haydn (more, I find, than to Mozart, the reference avowed by the composer) and to Stravinsky's neo-classical ballets. The first movement is maybe the most predictable, with its short, slow-moving, brooding intro with chorale-like horns over string pizzicati, giving way to an animated and playful allegro, with more vigorous and vehement outbursts, but also some of that neo-classical woodwind, brass or string interplay whose delicacy does stand out. The two middle movements are gently lyrical, lithe, very balletic - this is where Stravinsky's neo-classical ballets and Prokofiev's Classical Symphony vaguely come to mind, and I don't hear what the liner notes find "gawky" in the second. The Symphony ends with a scrurrying, syncopated and boisterously optimistic finale of irresistible drive, with even, at 3:24, a reminiscence of Mussorgky's Catacombs (from the Pictures).
The 7th Symphony "Liturgical" from 1958 doesn't show that much evolution. Formally it is in one movement with five strongly contrasting sections, the two outer ones being another somber and dramatic introduction, increasingly agitated than more appeased, and a short slow coda in wistful and pensive mood following the "vivace" finale. Speaking of which, Persichetti turns out again two fast movements of irresisistible drive, the second agitated, nervous, thorny, even angry, and the fourth scurrying and fugal. Here as in the two previous symphonies and even more than there, Persichetti is not inferior to Schuman, Mennin or Piston at writing these dynamic, forward-moving, exuberant, syncopated fast movements that will send your adrenalin shooting - but again, it seems to me that he follows a model already established and examplified by these composers, without adding much new. The middle section is gently lyrical and pastoral, in a way that it seems to me I've heard in I don't know how many American symphonies from those years, despite some interesting darker overtones at the end of the section.
Again, all this is enjoyable and well-made, but inventive, original, innovative, giving you the impression of hearing something that hasn't been said before, it is not. So maybe this is why Persichetti hasn't established a position as one of the major 20th-Century American symphonists.
TT is 80:14, with the 7th Symphony which makes up disc-2 only 25-minutes long.
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Track Listings (3) - Disc #1