Robert Ward

*  Quintet for oboe and string quartet
*  Raleigh Divertimento for nonet
*  Bath County Rhapsody for piano and string quartet
*  Arioso and Tarantelle for viola and piano
*  First Symphony

Joseph Robinson, oboe
Ciompi Quartet
Czech Nonet
Jane Hawkins, piano
Jonathan Bagg, viola
Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra/Alan Balter
Albany TROY1063  Total time: 67:36

Summary for the Busy Executive: On again, off again.

At one time, Robert Ward ranked as one of the fair-haired younger
American composers, a future bright light.  He studied with Hanson and
Rogers at Eastman and with Jacobi at Juilliard.  Even his student works
appeared in major venues.  The highpoint of his composing career occurred
in 1961, with the premiere of his opera, The Crucible, for which he
received a Pulitzer.  Unfortunately, American music moved another way.
Ward's idiom, essentially the neoclassicism regnant between the world
wars, younger composers regarded as played out.  Post-Webernian serialists
(and Elliott Carter) rose as temporary kings of the hill.  The search
for an "American" musical idiom was seen as corny, and composers aimed
to become "international." At this point, serious critics have pretty
much written Ward off, but even so, he had a fairly late run.  By 1955,
such critics were sniffing at the likes of Piston, Diamond, and interwar
Copland.

After The Crucible, Ward never made as big a splash, although he
continued to compose (including five more operas).  In fact, his Grove
entry has him dead in 1994 -- a neat trick, since he has produced new
work since then.  To some extent, one can explain this by his moving
from New York, where the arts receive the most critical attention, to
North Carolina, where he became Chancellor of the North Carolina School
of the Arts and, later, a professor at Duke University.  However, the
high inspiration that fired so many of his early works sputtered in fits
and starts in the later.  In general, the music fizzled out, although
here and there you could still find a late live firecracker.  This CD
presents a fair picture, I think, of Ward's career, early and late, risky
and safe.

I'll take the safe stuff first.  The oboe quintet (2005) constitutes
a well-written bore, hardly worth the trouble and a long way from the
quartets of William Schuman and Peter Mennin, Ward's rough contemporaries.
It's a "sociable" quartet, as opposed to a spiritual autobiography, like
many of the Haydns but lacking the genius.  In 1991, Bath County, Virginia,
commissioned the Bath County Rhapsody (1991).  They wanted a piece of
music that told the history of the place.  Ward writes that he accepted
the job since he couldn't think of a programmatic chamber work off the
top of his head.  He came up with essentially a movie score: the mists
of times past, the discovery of the place by the Native Americans, the
arrival of the white settlers, the Civil War, a final mountaineer's
celebration, and a final return to those old-timey mists.  While the
work has its moments, in general it shows Ward's invention at a very low
point.  The music for the Indians comes directly from "Injun" music in
Thirties B and C cowboy pictures.

On the other hand, in 1997, the Raleigh, North Carolina, Chamber Music
Guild engaged Ward to write the Raleigh Divertimento, which the composer
made originally for the Aspen Quintet.  Later, the famed Czech Nonet
asked him for a work they could play on an American tour, so he reworked
the piece for that group.  I have heard the very nice original, but the
nonet is a honey.  Springy and athletic, like the Piston and Martinu
works in the genre, it harbors no program; Ward has merely made a handsome
neoclassical object, and of course beauty is its own excuse for being.

The 1955 Arioso and Tarantelle Ward composed in memory of the conductor
Hans Kindler, who had fostered Ward's early career.  I had heard this
in a cello-and-piano version, and it didn't impress me then.  However,
this was probably due to the performance, because violist Jonathan Bagg
and pianist Jane Hawkins give this little work its due.  The Aria owes
much to Hindemith.  Indeed, a great deal of Ward's slow-and-solemn
movements do; he seems to regard it as the coin of High Seriousness.
However, one senses a character behind the notes warmer than Hindemith's
and feels that Ward has expressed a personal loss.

Ward produced his official First Symphony, and it received its first
professional performance under Kindler and the National Symphony, while
Ward was still a student at Juilliard.  A short, compact work of about
thirteen minutes, it betrays its student origins mostly in its structure.
Each of its three movements follows the same formal strategy: two subjects,
developed separately, and combined in the recap.  The harmony again
derives from Hindemith, but Ward lacks Hindemith's formal and contrapuntal
virtuosity.  Still, the work insists on and rewards a listener's attention.
One can easily see why people expected great things from the young
composer.  It has an intensity that the oboe quintet and the Bath County
Rhapsody lack.

The performances are quite fine, with the Czech Nonet outstanding in
the Raleigh Divertimento.  The symphony is marred by a bass hum and what
sounds like overprinting -- that is, a series of after-echoes in the
lull after a large climax.  I didn't think this was possible in digital
recording, but there you are.

Steve Schwartz

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