William Schuman: 'Credendum'; Piano Concerto; Symphony No. 4
John McCabe, piano
David Alan Miller, cond., Albany Symphony Orchestra
Albany TROY566

Fine new recordings of three important Schuman pieces

This release contains three of William Schuman's important pieces from
the 1940s: "Credendum," the Piano Concerto, and the Fourth Symphony.
All have a toehold in the repertoire (and indeed I've heard all three
of them in concert) but, with the exception of "Credendum," they have
never had decent recordings.  This release featuring the Albany Symphony
Orchestra under David Alan Miller, and with the distinguished pianist
and composer, John McCabe, fills that need.

"Credendum," (Latin for "That Which Must Be Believed," and subtitled
"Article of Faith") exists in this orchestral version and also in a
wind band version fashioned by the composer.  It was commissioned by
the State Department to honor UNESCO.  It has three sections.  The first,
"Declaration," is a forthright and declamatory movement primarily for
brass, winds and percussion.  It feels like an oration about important
things.  The second section, "Chorale," is primarily for strings and is
an urban nocturne.  It is interrupted by the bustling "Finale," which
eventually leads back to a restatement of the striking "Declaration"
material.  This piece has always struck me as the most rhetorical of
Schuman's works and, given the circumstances of its commission, that
is appropriate.  There is still available a recording of "Credendum"
by Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadephia Orchestra; the current
performance is its equal and is in superior sound.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the Piano Concerto (1943).  I was
attending a public rehearsal of the piece many years ago (Samuel Lipman
was the pianist) and noticed a woman in the audience following a score.
I asked if I could look on, and thus started one of my longest and closest
friendships.  The piece is brashly jazzy in spots, and features one of
Schuman's most characteristic techniques, that of rhythmically interesting
modern counterpoint.  Schuman was certainly one of the most skilful of
mid-century America's contrapuntists.  The fugal sections of the finale
are light-hearted and invigorating.  Particularly effective is the
middle movement, an achingly yearning night-piece, reminding one of the
better-known "Lonely Town" that Leonard Bernstein wrote a year or so
later for his musical "On the Town."

The Fourth Symphony (1941) is similar to its more famous brother, the
Third.  It is in three movements.  It begins with a mournful English
horn solo accompanied by a solo bass viol; this sets the tone for the
symphony as a whole. It is dark, passionate, often bitter in tone.  (That
tone was perhaps appropriate in that its premiere came only weeks after
the attack on Pearl Harbor.) The last movement features an attractive
fugue - Schuman seems to work fugal passages into most of his orchestral
music - which is heard above the opening movement's striding bass line;
eventually the two themes are set against each other in the bass voices
before the symphony comes to a close in a blaze of victorious C major.

Schuman's music now strikes a somewhat nostalgic chord in that it
celebrates the broad-shouldered, if occasionally bewildered, optimism
of the industrial, urban USA at a time when that optimism was being
tested by the Second World War.  The big rhetorical gestures may now
feel a little trite; the irony of our age doesn't allow for that kind
of open-hearted determination, more's the pity.  It is strong, attractive,
skilfully made music that undoubtedly will last, even if it is somewhat
out of fashion these days.

David Alan Miller obtains lively, lovely performances from the Albany
Symphony Orchestra, a group that for decades has made a real reputation
for itself by playing modern American music.  John McCabe gives an alert
and musical account of the piano concerto, certainly outdoing the old
and inadequate recording with Gary Steigerwalt and the MIT Symphony.
And the performance of the Fourth Symphony easily outshines the old and
now-unobtainable recording by Robert Whitney and the Louisville Symphony.

Scott Morrison