Prokofiev: Symphony No. 6; Waltz
Suite. São Paulo Symphony
Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop. Naxos. $12.99.
Michael Daugherty: Tales of
Hemingway; American Gothic; Once Upon a Castle. Zuill Bailey, cello; Paul
Jacobs, organ; Nashville Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero. Naxos.
$12.99.
Giorgio Gaslini: Murales
Promenade; Adagio Is Beautiful; Piano Concerto. Alfonso Alberti, piano;
Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento conducted by Yoichi Sugiyama.
Stradivarius. $16.99.
Kevin Puts: Symphony No. 2;
River’s Rush; Flute Concerto. Adam Walker, flute; Peabody Symphony
Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop. Naxos. $12.99.
Prokofiev’s most delightful
symphony is his first, the “Classical,” but his best and most important are his
two from World War II, Nos. 5 and 6. They are something of a pair. The large
and imposing three-movement No. 6 has an overall dark cast that contrasts with
a certain lightness, if not exactly levity, and a greater sense of triumph over
adversity in the four-movement No. 5. That makes No. 5 somewhat more
traditional both structurally and emotionally, and means that No. 6 requires a
conductor of considerable sensitivity and willingness to take chances for it to
have its full effect. Marin Alsop is not that conductor: she tends to be
perfunctory and surface-level in most of her interpretations, especially of
familiar or relatively familiar works. Yet in her new Naxos recording of
Prokofiev’s Sixth with the São
Paulo Symphony Orchestra, part of a Prokofiev cycle that now lacks only his
final, seventh symphony, Alsop turns up with an excellent reading almost in
spite of herself. Something in the work speaks, if not to her, then to the
orchestra, which plays with fervor and intensity fully befitting the music and
with considerable sensitivity to the many shades of darkness that Prokofiev
here puts on display. Alsop seems more to be carried along with the music than
to shape it – her overly fast finale, indeed, almost derails the movement’s
effectiveness. But the performance as a whole turns out to be very successful
indeed, with the gradations of Prokofiev’s anti-triumphalist writing coming
through clearly and the sectional stability of the orchestra allowing the
symphony’s many themes and unusual balances to emerge to fine effect. The
reality must be that Alsop is responsible for shaping this very fine
performance, but it almost feels as if the orchestra is playing without a
conductor, with suppleness and sectional sensitivity that bring forth, all in
all, a very impressive reading. Alsop seems a stronger presence in the
six-movement and altogether lighter Waltz
Suite, in which Prokofiev recycled three pieces from Cinderella, two from War and
Peace and one from an abandoned film project, Lermontov, into a half-hour suite that explores three-quarter time
from a wide variety of angles and with numerous emotional high and low points.
The music is neither substantive nor substantial, but it is thoroughly pleasant
and showcases ways in which Prokofiev was a worthy, if lesser, successor to
Tchaikovsky in the waltz medium. The least-known of the waltzes, Mephisto Waltz from Lermontov, is the biggest surprise of the suite, speeding along
with real panache and some particularly interesting turns of phrase. Again the
orchestra delivers first-rate playing, and the result is a highly interesting
juxtaposition of a 1945-47 symphony that is very serious indeed with a 1946-47
suite that remains determinedly on the frothy side.
The symphonic nature of
three very recent compositions by Michael Daugherty (born 1954) comes through
especially clearly on a new Naxos disc that gives all three their world première recordings, all taken from live
performances. Daugherty has a fine command of large orchestral forces and a
style that, while very clearly modern, does not eschew tonality or emotional
communication when those are the tools he needs to make his musical points. The
three works here could be collectively called “Portraits.” Tales of Hemingway (2015) is a very symphonic cello concerto that
gets a bang-up reading from Zuill Bailey and wonderful accompaniment from the
Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero. The percussion alone, requiring
two players, is remarkable: one performer handles chimes, vibraphone with yarn
mallets and bow, marimba, mark tree (a set of bell chimes), suspended cymbal
and triangle, while the other is in charge of crotales, glockenspiel, triangle,
piccolo snare drum, kick drum, a different suspended cymbal, tambourine, castanets,
claves, maracas and another mark tree. The music is not even slightly
Mahlerian, but Daugherty uses the percussion complement much as Mahler used his
vast orchestral forces: surprisingly delicately, a bit at a time, only rarely bursting
forth with the strength and intensity that so large a collection of instruments
is capable of delivering. The performers here gave this work its world première concert performance, and that is
the live recording heard on the CD. The rather surprising choice of a cello to
represent Hemingway ties to the reality that the famously macho author actually
played that instrument as a child, in school orchestras. Certainly much of the
cello writing is big, almost brassy (an odd adjective for a cello, but there it
is); but much of it uses the instrument’s considerable lyrical potential as
well. The four movements of the work are named for four Hemingway stories or
novels: Big Two-Hearted River, For Whom
the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Sun Also Rises. Daugherty’s subtlety is much in evidence here,
in his minimal but clear use of castanets and maracas for the Spanish setting
of The Sun Also Rises and his
sprinkling of bell sounds throughout For
Whom the Bell Tolls instead of having them resound intensely. Tales of Hemingway contrasts
interestingly with American Gothic
(2013), a three-movement orchestral suite intended to reflect the life and
works of Iowa artist Grant Wood and coming across partly as Daugherty’s tribute
to his own Iowa childhood. Here too the scope is symphonic. The first movement,
On a Roll, is bright and colorful;
the second, Winter Dreams, reflects
the bleakness of an Iowa winter as well as Wood’s paintings of those
cold-weather scenes; and the third, Pitchfork,
based on Wood’s most-famous painting, is quirky and witty and amusing and
difficult to pin down as to its meaning – much like the painting itself. Also
on this attractive CD is Once Upon a
Castle (2003/2015), which is an organ concerto and, yet again, a piece of
symphonic proportions and scale. The castle here is not a European one but that
of William Randolph Hearst in California, famous as a 165-room grand estate, a
symbol of “wretched excess,” and part of the inspiration for Orson Welles’
iconic Citizen Kane. Daugherty’s work
has as strong a personal stamp here as in American
Gothic. He opens with The Winding
Road to San Simeon, taking listeners on the five-mile trip through the
mountains to Hearst’s monument. Neptune
Pool offers strictly contemporary water music, befitting the tremendously
over-decorated Olympic-size pool surrounded by statues of Neptune and water
nymphs. Rosebud moves into Welles
territory and juxtaposes the organ-as-Kane (the Hughes figure in the film) with
a solo violin representing his mistress, Susan Alexander (the film’s name for
Marion Davies). Paul Jacobs, who gives a wonderful performance throughout,
offers especially sonorous material here. The final movement, Xanadu, musically portrays one of the
many elegant parties held at Hearst Castle during the 1920s and 1930s. It
neatly ties up a suite in which fairy tales about castles, fairy tales
Hollywood style, and the real world in which the Hearst castle still exists, are
all on display. All of Daugherty’s music on this disc is very American, very
contemporary, and at the same time very personal: Daugherty is one composer who
has developed, maintained and over time expanded a musical vocabulary all his
own.
There are distinctive
elements as well to the musical style of Giorgio Gaslini (1929-2014). His come
mainly from jazz, the musical field in which he is best-known. But a new CD on
the Stradivarius label shows that he could work effectively in more
traditionally classical modes as well. Like Daugherty, Gaslini does not shy
from tonality, but while Daugherty’s works tend to be carefully planned and
tightly controlled, Gaslini’s often have an improvisational feeling to them
even when they are fully written out. As a performer, Gaslini was known as an
effective improvisational jazz pianist; the two piano-and-orchestra works on
this disc show how he adapted that element of his career to music with a more
classical, even symphonic structure. Murales
Promenade is a kind of Pictures at an
Exhibition, Gaslini style. This four-movement piano concerto dates to 2008
but derives its thematic material from a 30-year-earlier jazz work. In this
form, the work was inspired by walking through a Latin American town and seeing
a series of large, impressive murals whose subjects varied from the celebratory
to the sinister. The colors and forms were often violent and always emotionally
expressive, and those are the qualities of Gaslini’s music, which seesaws
repeatedly among expressions – from the solemn to the agitated, from the bright
and outgoing to the dark and portentous. Murales
Promenade is followed on this CD by the strongly contrasting Adagio Is Beautiful, a 1998 piece for 16
strings that shows Gaslini at his most Romantic: it starts in darkness and
uncertainty and gradually is transformed into a kind of radiant affirmation.
This relatively short work (nine minutes) makes an effective dividing line
between the two large concertos heard here. The second of those, simply called Concerto, dates to 2013 and is one of
Gaslini’s last works. Interestingly, although Murales Promenade has traditional tempo markings for its four
movements and Concerto has
descriptive ones (starting with Ursa
Major for the first and Terra!
for the second), Concerto really does
have a more traditionally classical structure and approach. All four movements
are traceable to the same seven-note series, and the work as a whole follows an
arc not too different from that of Adagio
Is Beautiful. After the first two movements, in which Concerto focuses on the dark and the vast emptiness of space, the
third movement bears an Italian title that translates as “Echoes of the songs
of John Donne in the 21st century,” and the fourth has a title, also
in Italian, that can be translated, “Crossed paths – head-on into the wind.”
These movements represent a turn to the human and philosophical from the first two
movements’ outward focus on nature and the natural universe. The initial
darkness of Concerto becomes
increasingly exultant – and, interestingly, increasingly tonal – until the work
finally ends triumphantly and includes an actual spiritual, indicating in what
way Gaslini sees human reaching-out as leading eventually to emotional
affirmation. Pianist Alfonso Alberti handles both concertos on the CD
skillfully, and the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento under Yoichi Sugiyama
provides effective, if rather dutiful, backup, albeit with strings that really
shine in Adagio Is Beautiful. Gaslini
is not among the best-known contemporary composers, but on the strength of this
disc, he is worthy of more attention: unlike many modern composers who insist
on adding together classical and jazz elements in ways that often seem awkward
or overdone, Gaslini offers more of a jazz sensibility
within formal classical models, giving his works – at least the ones heard here
– a consistent voice, with more genuineness than is to be found in most music
that proclaims itself to be “crossover.” Gaslini’s pieces are more a true blend
than a colloidal suspension of jazz and classical elements – that is, they are
an altogether smoother and more-complete mixture.
The music of Kevin Puts
(born 1972), available on another new Naxos CD conducted by Marin Alsop, has
some interesting elements but is less compelling than that of Daugherty and
Gaslini. The three world première
recordings here showcase Alsop in her most-effective role, as an advocate of
new and less-known music rather than a presenter of well-known works by
composers whose reputations are already
solid. Puts’ Symphony No.2 (2002) is one of an innumerable number of well-meaning
works responding to the terrorist murders in New York City and Pennsylvania on
September 11, 2001. Its introspective sincerity is undoubted, but it is not
especially distinctive or evocative in its progression from rather standard
evocation of tragedy to a meditative conclusion whose ending in uncertainty
reflects the notion of not knowing what lies ahead. It is an occasional work
rather than one for the ages. River’s
Rush (2004) is also straightforward in presenting the sense of rapidly
moving river currents. The work is cast as an orchestral perpetuum mobile featuring a series of short motives. Like any
number of other portrayals of flowing water, it inevitably recalls Smetana’s Vltava, which continues to stand far
above its imitators and successors. Like the symphony, this tone poem is
well-crafted but not really distinguished in any significant way from similar
works by other composers. The best piece here is the Flute Concerto (2013/2014), with Adam Walker’s excellent playing
complementing the equally fine sound of the Peabody Symphony Orchestra under
Alsop – all at the service of a work that, ironically, has a much-more-personal
style than the others here even though it also includes more-overt echoes of
earlier composers. The lyrical opening of a first movement marked “With great
sincerity and affection; flexible, with motion” very definitely recalls Copland
in manner and directness of appeal; the second movement, simply labeled Andante, rather oddly (but surprisingly
effectively) mixes Mozartian beauty with parody of (or, perhaps, commentary
upon) the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 21; and the finale, a toccata marked
“Very fast, with tremendous energy,” puts both Walker and the orchestra through
some highly exuberant paces whose unflagging high energy makes for a thoroughly
rousing conclusion. There is no “big message” in this concerto, and perhaps for
that reason it comes across much more directly and successfully than the
meaning-heavy Symphony No. 2. The CD as a whole gets a (+++) rating – it is
worth having for the concerto alone, and River’s
Edge is pleasant enough, but although well-intentioned and well-made, Puts’
Symphony No. 2 has little staying power and ultimately not much to recommend it
for repeated hearings.
