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Tag: American Composers

David Diamond’s Rounds American Optimism in Music

In 1944, American composer David Diamond, at 29-years-old, received a commission from Dimitri Mitropoulos, principal conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. Mitropoulos had only one stipulation. “These are distressing times,” he said. “Most of the music I play is distressing. Make me happy.” Diamond responded, in the exuberance of youth, with his “Rounds for String Orchestra.”

The piece is alive with imitative counterpoint, the title a reference to musical canons or “rounds” – you know, like the “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “Frère Jacques” – with the different “voices” entering in rapid succession along the same melodic lines. The melodies are Diamond’s own, but sound every bit as “American” as Copland’s assimilation of an Appalachian fiddle dance or a Shaker tune or a Mississippi riverboat song.

Regarding the piece, Diamond wrote, “The different string choirs enter in strict canonic fashion as an introduction to the main subject, which is played by the violas and soon restated by the cellos and basses. The Adagio is an expressive lyric movement, acting as a resting point between the two fast movements. The last movement again makes use of characteristic canonic devices, though it may be more specifically analyzed as a kind of fugal countersubject for the principal thematic ideas, so helping to ‘round’ out the entire work and unify the entire formal structure.”

There is an inevitability about the piece that makes it almost an ebullient, extroverted flipside of Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” Both works exude inspiration and are perfectly argued, without a wasted note. “Rounds” is Diamond’s most famous work, but it still deserves to be heard more frequently. It can hold its head high on any classical music concert that aspires to represent what’s best in American music.

It should be considered with the same respect and affection as Barber’s “Adagio,” Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” and Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” It’s that good. Optimism, vitality, and joy are too often dismissed at the expense of the weightier considerations of human existence.

Today would have been Diamond’s 110th birthday. He went on to write quite a lot of quality music – and not all of it “happy” – including 11 symphonies (criminally, some of these have yet to be recorded), but nothing I’ve heard – and I have heard more than most – equals the sustained inspiration of Diamond’s “Rounds.”

I pray that the impending U.S. Semiquincentennial brings a much-deserved reassessment of the greatest generation of American symphonists, now sadly neglected, of which Diamond is one; but so far, what I’ve seen of the 2025-26 concert season brochures from Philadelphia, New York, and Princeton has not been promising (one Ives symphony aside). If I had the power and a podium, I would see to it that the cream of Walter Piston, Roy Harris, William Schumann, Howard Hanson, Peter Mennin, Vincent Persichetti, Randall Thompson, Harold Shapero, and yes, David Diamond, would flow.

The world should be reminded of the creative promise of this country – its vibrancy, energy, and invention – when it still seemed to be very much on the way up.

Thank you, David Diamond, and happy birthday wherever you are.

I just discovered this remarkable performance of “Rounds” by a youth orchestra, so don’t tell me it’s too “difficult” to program. Too bad somebody in the audience drops an anvil at around 5:45.

July 9, 2025
Thanksgiving Music Feast American Composers KWAX

While it seems to be the fashion these days to slap up the Christmas lights with Halloween barely in rear-view mirror, I’m old school. There’s no Christmas in this house until Advent or, this year, until the Thanksgiving leftovers run out.

Therefore, don’t be surprise if, this week on “Sweetness and Light,” my head is decidedly NOT full of sugar plums tucked in their beds (or however it goes). I am not there yet. Rather, I’ll be piling the turkey sandwiches high with cranberry sauce for breakfast as we savor musical delights suggestive of Thanksgiving weekend.

Some of the works will be evocative of foods associated with the holiday. All will be American in origin. Some will be specifically connected to New England.

The playlist, etched in mashed potatoes, will include music by John Williams, Edward MacDowell, Craig Russell, Leonard Bernstein, Morton Gould, and pianist/rodeo champion David Guion.

I’ll be wringing out the last of the cornucopia with an hour of Thanksgiving leftovers, on “Sweetness and Light.” Join me in shoveling in the pumpkin pie and whipped cream, this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

November 30, 2024
Charles Ives Avant-Garde Nostalgia

Charles Ives was the most nostalgic of avant-gardists. For the most part laboring at his music in isolation – in the evenings and on weekends, while earning his bread as an insurance executive – he managed to prognosticate, or at any rate, arrive independently, at some of the major developments of the 20th century. Some may perceive his grinding harmonies and clashing meters as a kind of temple of Moloch, on the altar of which beauty is sacrificed for effect. As Ives himself once remarked, “Are my ears on wrong?” But consider, the straw for his bricks was harvested from the music of the world around him, especially that recollected from his boyhood in Connecticut.

Ives could construct breathtaking musical edifices from the most diverse materials. Forget Moloch. Perhaps a better parallel would be the Tower of Babel. Only in Ives’ case, once the language becomes confused it actually seems to enliven his creative impulse. Consonance and dissonance are of no consequence to the composer. He listens past the cacophony to draw his energy from powerful associations. And he continued right on building, always grasping for the stars.

I find it fascinating that Gustav Mahler took an interest in Ives’ Symphony No. 3. Mahler discovered a copy of the score on his final visit to Manhattan as music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1911, and presumably it was still in his possession at the time of his death later that year. In the 1950s, an aged percussionist recollected playing the bell-part in a read-through of the work under Mahler’s baton in Munich. Did it happen? Mahler’s score has never come to light. Ives claimed Mahler took it with the intention of giving the work its premiere. Unfortunately, Mahler died (at 50) before he was able to do anything about it. It’s mind-bending to contemplate the one-time music director of the Vienna State Opera (and by extension the Vienna Philharmonic) performing Ives in 1911. When worlds collide!

But really, were the artists so very different? Mahler famously stated (to Sibelius), “The symphony must be like the world: it must embrace everything!” Mahler demonstrated this by filling his symphonies with fondly recollected folk material, rustic and courtly dances, children’s songs, hymns, and klezmer riffs. Ives leaned into hymns, patriotic marches, parlor songs, and quotations from the core classical repertoire he loved. Their music may have come out completely different, but both composers yearned to express, through these everyday human associations, universal truths that often reached beyond our terrestrial concerns.

Ives heard Mahler conduct in New York, but as he became more deeply involved in composition, he largely stopped going to concerts of other composers’ music. He found that it interfered with his recall of ideas in development, when he was still carrying them around inside his head. He said he could listen to Beethoven or Brahms, any of the music he grew up with, and it wouldn’t be an issue. But taking in new music could muddy his thoughts. Whether or not he ever heard any of Mahler’s symphonies, I do not know.

In the event, like most of Ives’ output, his Symphony No. 3 was not performed until years after it was written. Composed in 1908-10, it was finally given its premiere (in New York, under Lou Harrison) in 1946. The next year, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Ives passed along half the prize money to Harrison and commented gruffly, “Prizes are for boys, and I’m all grown up.”

Ives may come across as something of a tinkerer, and he often portrayed himself as such, but like the greatest modernists, he had mastered the basics of his craft. His studies with Horatio Parker at Yale gave him a sound foundation in the rules of composition. Just as Picasso or Schoenberg demonstrated that they had mastered traditional forms before blazing their own trails, Ives was capable of writing within convention. But he was always irrepressibly Ives. He was always chafing and often pushing, and you just know Professor Parker had his hands full.

Ives, the cranky Yankee, often got his back up against the musically complacent, whom he derided in his writings as “Rollo” – a named borrow from a popular children’s book character in the decades preceding the American Civil War.

He also played baseball for Yale. Whether on the field or in his study, throughout his career, he kept right on swinging for the fences.

Remembering Charles Ives, with admiration, on the 150th anniversary of his birth!

The Symphony No. 3, subtitled “The Camp Meeting,” is actually one of Ives’ most immediately accessible scores. The three movements: “Old Folks Gatherin’,” “Children’s Day,” and “Communion.”

For Ives at his cumulatively cacophonous best, try “The Fourth of July.” No composer understood as well the holiday from a boy’s perspective!

October 20, 2024
Autumn Equinox Rediscovering American Composers

This week on “The Lost Chord,” in anticipation of tomorrow’s Autumn Equinox, lend a little color to your weekend with seasonal evocations by two American composers.

Henry Hadley (1871-1937) studied at home with George Whitefield Chadwick and in Vienna with Eusebius Mandyczewski. In Europe, he befriended Richard Strauss and conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in his own Symphony No. 3. He was assistant conductor at the Mainz Opera, later music director of the Seattle Symphony, and became the first conductor of the San Francisco Symphony. One of his operas, “Cleopatra’s Night,” was performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. He served a stint as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, he founded the National Association of Composers and Conductors, and he was instrumental in establishing the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood. He guest conducted orchestras from Buenos Aires to Tokyo. Why then do so few remember him?

We’ll dig deep into the leaf pile of music history to revive Hadley’s Symphony No. 2, from 1901, subtitled “The Four Seasons.” The work begins with an evocation of a turbulent winter storm, followed by “Spring,” then “Summer.” The symphony concludes with a melancholy portrait of autumn, enlivened by the appearance of some rollicking hunting horns.

Toward the end of the hour, we’ll have just enough time for music by Leo Sowerby (1895-1968), sometimes called “the Dean of American Church Music.” Sowerby was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1946 for his cantata “Canticle to the Sun.” As antidote to the reflective nature of Hadley’s “Autumn,” we’ll conclude with the exuberant “Comes Autumn Time,” an uplifting work for solo organ.

I hope you’ll join me for “Well-Seasoned” – American composers of experience celebrate autumn – on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

September 21, 2024
Slatkin at 80 Ten Essential Recordings

Leonard Slatkin is fourscore today. In celebration of the maestro’s 80th birthday, here are ten of my favorite Slatkin recordings. Or rather, I tried to keep it to ten, but there may be one or two inadvertent, additional recommendations along the way.

You have to remember, following the death of Leonard Bernstein, there really wasn’t much action, in terms of major American conductors recording American composers for the major labels. Slatkin was one of the few with the chops and the clout to keep the flame burning. I will be forever grateful for his RCA albums, in particular those devoted to Walter Piston, William Schuman, and especially Samuel Barber. John Browning’s classic account of Barber’s Piano Concerto, with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, took decades to reach compact disc, during which it maintained the aura of a holy relic. You know what? When it finally WAS reissued, I was amazed by just how well the remake stacks up. It may lack the last degree of ferocity exhibited in the earlier version, but Browning still manages to hold fast to his laurels. In addition to Barber’s Symphony No. 1 and the now much-easier-to-find “School for Scandal Overture,” there is also a delightful performance of the composer’s “Souvenirs,” a nostalgic throwback to the Palm Court music recollected by Barber from his boyhood, with Browning and Slatkin playing piano four-hands. For me, the latter makes this disc essential.

Again, to fully appreciate Slatkin’s importance to American music, you have to really remember the context. At the time of his release (on EMI) of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, coupled with Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2 (subtitled “Romantic”), finding good recordings of music by American composers by reputable performers on big labels was like stumbling across a watercooler in the desert. Isaac Stern’s recording of the Barber Violin Concerto (with Bernstein) hadn’t even made it to CD yet. Now there must be a few dozen recordings of the concerto available. Back then, I was SO GRATEFUL for this one. Thankfully, the performance, with Elmar Oliveira the soloist, happens to be pretty damn good. To my knowledge, this was also the first digital recording of Hanson’s enduring “Romantic Symphony,” the composer’s best-loved work. If you didn’t have it on LP, you were out of luck, unless it happened to turn up on the radio. What a rewarding Romantic wallow this disc is! It’s one of those purchases that had me approaching the sales counter with sweaty palms and racing heart.

Slatkin also recorded a highly-praised disc of Barber orchestral works for EMI, another devoted to music of Gershwin, performances of the complete (as opposed to suites from) Copland ballets, and violin concertos of Schuman and Bernstein (his “Serenade”), again with Oliveira.

Of the American composers we now regard as classic, Slatkin recorded Copland, Barber, Bernstein, Ives, Piston, Schuman, and Barber for RCA. I already mentioned the Barber, perhaps my favorite of the series. The Piston album is also superb. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for the excellence of his symphonies, none of them really seem to have stuck in the public consciousness. Here, we get the Symphony No. 6, the “Three New England Sketches,” and my favorite recording of the suite from the ballet “The Incredible Flutist,” written for the Boston Pops and unlike anything else Piston ever wrote. Listen sharp to the cheers in the crowd scene for the contribution of Slatkin’s dog, Bud!

The William Schuman disc is also very special. Like Piston, Schuman enjoyed a reputation as a major American symphonist, but seriously, how often do we hear any of his works in the form, beyond the Symphony No. 3? (Parenthetically I heard Slatkin conduct the 3rd in Philadelphia in the 1990s. I attended the concert with one of my housemates at the time, who was Japanese, and I look back on the experience with amusement, as he thought we were going to hear Robert SCHUMANN! He did not like the symphony.) The featured work on Slatkin’s disc is the world premiere recording of the Symphony No. 10, subtitled “American Muse.” I won’t pretend the Symphony No. 10 is one of Schuman’s best, but I was elated to have it in such a fine performance. Also included are the lively “American Festival Overture,” unmistakably cut from the same cloth as the Symphony No. 3, and perhaps his most frequently encountered work, at least on radio (if we don’t count his orchestration of Ives’ organ piece “Variations on America”), the “New England Triptych,” based on tunes by Revolutionary Era composer William Billings. Slatkin’s recording is one of the best.

Even now, when we’re more spoiled for choice, how many recordings of Piston’s 6th or Schuman’s 10th are there?

There are those who swear allegiance to Slatkin’s RCA recording of Copland’s 3rd (coupled with the lesser-heard, aggressively modern, and undeniably thrilling “Music for a Great City”), but I can’t get Bernstein out of my ears. Another enjoyable Slatkin Copland album, however, includes a selection of the composer’s film music, including a transporting world premiere recording of a suite assembled from his Academy Award winning score to “The Heiress.” The program also includes Copland’s “Prairie Journal (Music for Radio).” In general, I prefer Copland’s own interpretations of his lesser works. Other conductors may have surpassed him in the big symphony and ballets, but Copland never recorded any music from “The Heiress” or “Prairie Journal.”

I should add that all the RCA issues, in their original releases, were further distinguished by cover art selected from the paintings of the great Thomas Hart Benton, giving them a heightened flavor of Americanness. Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony leave nothing to be desired on any of these discs.

Please keep in mind, all of these recordings have been repackaged in various permutations and with different cover art over the years. My comments pertain to the original releases. For me, perhaps perversely, the original packaging is as important to my overall enjoyment as the actual music the CDs contain!

Before his brilliant run with RCA (there are those who swear by his Vaughan Williams symphony cycle, and he recorded a surprisingly fine Schubert 9th), Slatkin’s primary outlet was the VOX label. In common with a great many other albums on VOX, if you can look past the lackluster packaging, the musicmaking is of impressive caliber. The performances, I should add, were recorded in analogue, but the sound is good.

Slatkin knocked it out of the park with his recordings of Prokofiev’s concert works arranged from the composer’s film scores (a 2-CD set including the cantatas “Alexander Nevsky” and “Ivan the Terrible” and the suite from “Lieutenant Kijé”). “Kijé” includes the rarely-heard parts for bass-baritone, as they were employed in the film. (From what I understand, Prokofiev himself sang on the film’s actual soundtrack.) Not everyone will consider this their benchmark, but I think the vocal contributions are refreshing and fun, especially in the famous “Troika.” The performances are by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

I am also very fond of their Rachmaninoff set, full of unexpected delights. I can’t speak to Slatkin’s recordings of the symphonies, because I haven’t heard them, but judging from the works reissued on another double-CD devoted to the composer’s choral and orchestral music, I’m confident that the conductor has an excellent feel for the idiom. The major pieces are “The Bells” (sung in English) and the Symphonic Dances, but for me the real discoveries are the shorter orchestral works and “Three Russian Songs.” These are recordings that have frequently been played on my radio programs.

On a related note, Slatkin’s Vox Gershwin recordings (newly reissued on Naxos) have also had an enduring hold on listeners and collectors.

Back to RCA, I also get a charge out of Slatkin’s recording, with the London Philharmonic and London Philharmonic Choir, of Walton’s gaudy cantata “Belshazzar’s Feast.” If you delight in the composer’s coronation marches or are a John Williams fan, stick it out through the somber introduction (the baritone soloist is Thomas Allen), because there are some passages that will definitely have you swaggering. What a thrilling piece! Of course, there are a number of excellent recordings, but none of them are coupled with Slatkin’s performance of Walton’s “Partita for Orchestra,” which outstrips Szell’s world premiere recording at every turn.

Even more orgiastic, in its way, than the blasphemous Belshazzar is William Bolcom’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience.” Not that the mood is unremittingly celebratory. Bolcom’s crazy quilt of Blake settings took 25 years to compose and encompasses a dizzying array of styles, from avant garde to musical theater to country fiddle. In performance, it spans about two and a half hours. It’s nice to hear Bolcom’s wife, Joan Morris, sing something other than cabaret songs for a change. She’s joined by any number of other soloists and musicians of the University of Michigan, including multiple choruses. This is not a work for every day, maybe (it’s not every day that you can carve out two and a half hours), but really, to my knowledge there is nothing else like it in American music. It contains multitudes.

John Williams’ concert pieces are nothing like his film scores, but they are built to last, often offering up their rewards only gradually over several listenings. Having lived with his Violin Concerto (now his Violin Concerto No. 1) for decades, I can confidently state that Slatkin’s recording, on Varèse Sarabande with violinist Mark Peskanov and the London Symphony Orchestra, is far and away the most satisfying. It is also the only recording to document Williams’ original thoughts, as much later he revised the piece, tightening it up and getting it to a more manageable length. In my opinion, this was a mistake. The piece is much more powerful in its original form. It is not background music, by any means. At Brahmsian length (it’s over 40 minutes long), it demands your full attention. Do not go into it expecting to be coddled. The Korngold concerto it ain’t! For as well-played as the most recent recording is, with James Ehnes (excellent when I heard him play it live in Philadelphia) and the St. Louis Symphony conducted by Stéphane Denève, Peskanov and Slatkin, as purveyors of the original version, are still the team to beat.

Finally, Slatkin recorded a disc for Chandos records of transcriptions of music by Johann Sebastian Bach. This is not a program that plumbs any great musical depths. Sure, Bach is Bach, but trust me, you won’t be listening for the content, but rather for the dazzling colors and invention of those other than Leopold Stokowski (already well-represented elsewhere) who had the audacity to orchestrate his music. These include Ottorino Respighi, Sir Granville Bantock, Arthur Honegger, Max Reger, Sir Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Joachim Raff, Gustav Holst, and Arnold Schoenberg, all very well sold by the BBC Philharmonic, under Slatkin’s baton. Don’t just sit there – order it now!

I’m not asserting that these are Slatkin’s greatest recordings, but they are ten (or so) that have given me a lot of enjoyment over the years. As suggested, the performances have been reissued occasionally and mixed and matched as labels have been bought and sold. So you might have to do a little research, if you’re interested, to be sure you’re really getting what you’re looking for. EMI was swallowed by Warner, RCA is now part of Sony, and some of the Vox stuff has started to turn up on Naxos. In fact, Naxos has issued for the first time many of Slatkin’s recordings with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (including a cycle of John Williams concertos featuring the orchestra’s principals, which, alas, appears to be available only as digital downloads) and the Orchestre National de Lyon (for which he recorded the complete orchestral works of Maurice Ravel, including some fascinating rarities).

Any others? Feel free to leave your favorites in the comments.

Happy hunting! And happy birthday, Leonard Slatkin!

September 1, 2024

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