Malcolm Forsyth

* Cello Concerto, "Electra Rising"
* Valley of a Thousand Hills
* Saxophone Concerto, "Tre Vie"

Amanda Forsyth (cello), William H. Street (alto sax), Edmonton Symphony
Orchestra/Grzegorz Nowak
CBC Records SMCD 5180 Total time: 73:59

Summary for the Busy Executive: Vigorous, handsome music.

Born in South Africa, Forsyth emigrated to Canada, where he has apparently
made a living, to judge from his commissions.  I first heard his music on
a Pro Coro Canada disc (Arktos Recordings 960014CD), and his strong grip
on form impressed me greatly.  Forsyth not only could handle complication -
in this case, the sudden switches of thought in texts by John Donne - but
could create something expressive.  This CD both reinforces that impression
and adds to it.

Unlike, say, Copland, Forsyth hasn't an immediately-recognizable voice,
but that doesn't really matter.  He has instead an individual personality
or attitude toward his materials.  The idiom is kind of post-Walton, a la
Alwyn.  If you can handle either of those composers, Forsyth's music should
give you little trouble.  The basic impulse of the music is classic Modern,
rather than avant-garde contemporary.  Forsyth's distinction lies in his
approach to form.  Almost all the works here are a bit odd and frequently
quite daring structurally.  Yet, the composer brings them off with such
aplomb, a listener could miss the quirks.  The music, above all, strikes
me as the work of a consummate pro, with a marvelous orchestral and
contrapuntal imagination.

The most eloquent work on the program (and, happily, the most recent -
1995) is the cello concerto, "Electra Rising," written for the composer's
daughter, Amanda.  A mere recital of the movement titles - "Cadenza.  With
gossamer lightness," "Mayibuye Afrika!  Scherzo-like; strictly rhythmic,"
"Cadenza.  Dramatic," and "Paean.  Hymn-like; radiant" - reveals Forsyth's
idiosyncratic mind.  With the first movement in particular, one faces
with the composer the challenge of a ten-minute "cadenza" - actually, an
accompanied cadenza, much like a similar passage in Elgar's violin concerto
- a freely rhythmic song in the solo instrument against mainly a background
of chords.  This could easily degenerate into aural soup or the equivalent
of nattering, but there really is a symphonic argument here which the
listener can follow without strain.  It's also intensely beautiful.  The
second movement is polyrhythmic counterpoint in mixed meters.  It may also
be that individual instruments could be in different meters - for example,
3/4 + 7/8 in one line and 2/4+5/8+2/4 in another simultaneous line.  The
opening orchestration evokes for me the sound of the African thumb piano,
although one of symphonic size.  Exuberant, the movement celebrates the end
of apartheid in Forsyth's birthplace of South Africa.  I catch snatches of
African tribal dancing as well.

The second "cadenza" movement somewhat reverses the first.  This time the
orchestra material mostly takes up the thematic argument, while the cellist
explores all the way the instrument can make chords - strumming, plucking,
bowing, arpeggiating, and so on.  Although half the length of the first
movement, this cadenza runs the same artistic risk.  Yet it comes across
as lyrical, rather than contrived, even though it lacks a "hummable" tune.
The finale is essentially another slow movement (the concerto has three
altogether), but this time the soloist gets to sing in the way we associate
with the instrument.  The composer's indication "radiant" hits the mark of
the music's character.

The composer's daughter and inspiration takes up the solo part, and,
far from being Daddy's Little Indulgence, she's probably one of the
most distinguished string players I've heard.  A cellist friend of mine
once divided cellists into two camps: roughly Casals vs.  Feuermann or
Rostropovich vs.  Starker - a big tone as opposed to a clear one.  I tend
to favor the Feuermann, Fournier, and Starker camp, and Amanda Forsyth
belongs there.  A student of, among others, William Pleeth, she has
mastered color, dynamics, and phrasing and has a grasp of musical
architecture few players achieve in a lifetime.  She's still in her
thirties.  I wish her a great career.

Valley of a Thousand Hills, a three-movement evocation of South African
landscape and culture, lightens up emotionally.  I've not seen South
Africa, so I'm not sure what pictures, if any, the music should bring
forth.  The most conventionally descriptive movement is the second,
"Mkambathini," the Zulu name for Table Mountain.  The music puts it off
in the distance or surrounded by mist.  More than that, however, the three
movements are all technically "about" ostinato and orchestration.  Despite
that description, this isn't minimalist music.  It lacks the expanded
time-sense of most minimalist work.  Development happens within "normal"
time frames.  Nevertheless, Forsyth risks stasis with his ostinati,
although he always knows when to move on.  Furthermore, he uses the
patterns to create something new and expressive.  For example, the striking
opening of the first movement, "Horizons," builds the music before your
very ears, as the main theme looms out of wispy fragments and becomes a
buoyant dance.  Forsyth also constructs a nifty transition between the
second and third movements, the latter called "Village Dance." Here we get
Crestonian cross-rhythms in unusual meters (according to the liner notes,
17/8).  Forsyth scores so clearly that we actually hear each contributing
strand to the polyrhythm.  Nowak and the Edmonton Symphony do a very good
job with these.

The saxophone concerto is also a bit of an odd duck.  Conceived in three
movements, each inspired by one of the Roman highways (Appian, Flaminian,
and Salarian), it wound up with four.  During its composition, Messiaen
died, and Forsyth wrote a second-movement homage.  Forsyth's music isn't
particularly Messiaenic, but perhaps Forsyth simply wanted to acknowledge
the passing of an influential figure, one who touched the musical thinking
of so many after the Second World War.

The opening ("Presto, ritmico.  Like a meteor") makes use of the by-now
familiar ostinati and cross-accents, mainly in five, this time to create
something like a Middle Eastern dance.  Stravinskian pesante chords make
their appearance as well.  The liner notes find a link to the
"Mediterranean" Walton, which I don't hear myself.  At any rate, the bouncy
rhythm gives way to an intense singing from the sax, before the bouncy part
returns.  The scoring is preternaturally transparent.  The second-movement
"Ommagio a Messiaen (1908-1992)" is essentially an extended cadenza for the
instrument.  The only musical links I can discover to the French composer
are a kind of "suspension of time" and a discreet use of percussion and
slightly out-of-the-way string effects.  This leads directly to the slow
third movement, "Melancolico" (shouldn't that be "malinconico?") - where
the sax sounds as if in a slight funk.  The finale follows without pause.
The spirited rhythm dispels the longeurs of the "Melancolico," but the
harmony retains its astringency.  It's an energetic, but not particularly
happy ending.

William H. Street, a performer new to me, plays with a tone so clean, so
free of fuzz, that at times his instrument sounds like a clarinet.  It's
a good job.  The recorded sound is fine.

Steve Schwartz