(+++) AS AMERICAN AS….

Aaron Larget-Caplan: Guitar America 250. Aaron Larget-Caplan, guitar; Irina Muresanu, violin; Charles Coe, Jeffrey Lependorf and Trevor Neal, spoken word. Navona. $20. 

Kip Winger: Violin Concerto “In the Language of Flowers”; Symphony of the Returning Light. Peter Otto, violin; Nashville Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero. Naxos. $19.99. 

     The evolution and eventual revolution of England’s American colonies into the United States of America are being predictably and in many ways suitably celebrated on the 250^th anniversary of the United States’ Declaration of Independence – even as internal and external questioning and geopolitical turmoil and uncertainty remind historians (if no one else) that the world of 1776 was in some ways just as chaotic, disturbed and uncertain as the world of 2026. Then as now, music was very much a part of life, and then as now, it could be a means of unification or division, depending on how it was created and used. Aaron Larget-Caplan’s new Navona recording, whose rather unwieldy full title is Guitar America 250: Revolutionaries and Rockstars, is largely in celebratory vein; but it does acknowledge, often and largely intentionally, some of the inherent challenges and contradictions of the American experience. Most of the release is musical, and most of the music is arranged by Larget-Caplan as well as performed by him. And those aspects of the recording are very fine indeed: Larget-Caplan is a first-rate guitarist with a strong command not only of the technical side of performance but also of the guitar’s emotional range and evocative capabilities – elements of which composers as diverse as Vivaldi, Sor and Tárrega were well aware but that are not always brought forth as effectively as they are here. The hint of this being something more than a jingoistic display is, however, clear from the first track, which is not The Star-Spangled Banner (originally a British drinking song called To Anacreon in Heaven, one of many ways in which “American exceptionalism” is less than clear-cut) but Leonard Bernstein’s America, from West Side Story – a song whose portrayal of the United States through members of the 1950s Puerto Rican diaspora is far from completely celebratory. The Star-Spangled Banner is heard after this, and afterwards there are various expected tracks: America the Beautiful and God Bless America, for example, and Battle Hymn of the Republic – originally John Brown’s Body, a Civil War entry whose origin tends to be largely ignored in favor of its religious fervor. Also here are Simple Gifts, Over There (another war-originating song), and more. Again and again, Larget-Caplan shows his sensitivity as both arranger and performer: there is genuine beauty in many of the familiar tunes, and a freshness in their sound that keeps even the best-known ones enjoyable to hear. But a great deal of the recital, which includes 14 world première recordings in its 21 tracks, goes beyond now-traditional material to include elements such as Paul Simon’s America, Van Halen’s 316, Alan Hovhaness’ Mystic Flute, and three entries from John Cage – one of them a reading by Jeffrey Lependorf. Cage’s words fit uneasily into the overall atmosphere here, and the other word-only tracks will certainly not be to everyone’s taste – including the last of them, read by Larget-Caplan himself, which uses the First Amendment text with repeats of “no law” and other words to make some rather heavy-handed political points. As a whole, the recording is “occasional music” in the sense of being intended for a specific occasion – and is also, occasionally, non-musical by intent and design. That gives it a sense of personalization but also likely reduces the chance that listeners will continue to enjoy it, or at least some parts of it, after the occasion for which it was created recedes into memory. 

     Contemporary American music, like contemporary American society, tends to be polyglot, and modern composers frequently straddle multiple genres or combine elements of different musical forms in their attempts to produce something distinctive. The extent of their success varies widely and tends largely to depend on how seamlessly they mix differing material into an effective (and, hopefully, aurally digestible) new recipe. Kip Winger (born 1961), for example, is a onetime metal-rock bass guitarist and songwriter who grew up in a jazz-musician family and eventually turned to writing ballet – which in turn led to commissions for the two works receiving their world première recordings on a new Naxos CD. Winger’s history is interesting enough, but the effectiveness of his music depends on the works themselves rather than the provenance of their creator. Certainly Winger’s Violin Concerto “In the Language of Flowers” (2024-2025) provides plenty of opportunities for soloist Peter Otto, for whom it was written, to show off his virtuosity – starting with the extended cadenza that opens the entire work. Somewhat surprisingly, the music turns intensely lyrical right after that cadenza, and if the floral titles of the four movements (Forsythia, Viscaria, Ambrosia, Wisteria) bring little clarity to the work’s emotional compass, the music really does speak effectively for itself. And Otto, in turn, speaks effectively for the music: he handles its performance complexities with apparent ease and seems to revel in the unusual rhythms and fantasia-like structure that pervades the individual movements as well as the concerto as a whole. Some of the exclamatory orchestral indulgences and uses of the upper extreme of the violin’s range are a touch overdone, and after a while the theatricality of the dips into lyricism becomes a bit much – although the warmth of the third movement is winning and provides the basis for an effective contrast with the finale, which interestingly echoes Shostakovich in some of its harmonic explorations (and, less appealingly, in some of its bombast). Symphony of the Returning Light (2018-2020), described by Winger as autobiographical, is intriguingly designed around Morse-code rhythms that are reflected in the titles of its four movements: S.O.S., Eleos, Metamorphosis, and Metanoia. However, once again the music needs to stand on its own in order to have any staying power: its structural underpinnings are a curiosity, but requiring audiences to study them in order to appreciate the work is no more reasonable than insisting that listeners study Berlioz’ love life in order to be moved by his Symphonie fantastique (which Winger cites as one of his models). Winger’s use of a MIDI keyboard to produce the Morse code that becomes the basis of each movement gives his symphony a suitably modern gloss, but what is more interesting is Winger’s handling of the orchestra, which shows considerable skill, and the very involving way in which Giancarlo Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony bring forth Winger’s musical thinking. Unfortunately, some of that thinking tends to confuse noisiness with emphasis and ostinato with inevitable forward momentum: Winger handles the orchestra very ably, and the players give the symphony their all, but the music itself, whatever individualized experiences it may be intended to illustrate, comes across as in large part superficial. It flows well enough, and the foundational Morse code is an intriguing design element, but ultimately the work is not especially convincing on its own terms: it does not reach out to an unenlightened audience – that is, one unfamiliar with its reasons for being – to any significant extent. Requiring listeners to equate Eleos with “Mercy” and Metanoia with “Change of Heart” in order to taste the full flavor of the musical material actually makes the symphony less effective, not more: the work shows how well Winger has moved among musical genres but suggests that, like America itself, he still has some adapting and growing to do in order to arrive at an even better place than the one that he and the country currently occupy.