Lukas Foss
The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Julianne Baird (Miss Lulu)
Frederick Urrey (Smiley)
Kevin Deas (Stranger)
Manhattan Chamber Orchestra/Richard Auldon Clark
Newport Classics NPD85609 Total time: 51:04
Summary for the Busy Executive: A gem.
Okay, I might as well get my only beef with this CD off my chest.
Its fifty-one minutes runs a little on the light side anyway. However,
eleven of those minutes belong to excerpts from the Twain story, read in
a hillbilly accent phonier than John Carradine's. Consequently, this CD
contains really only forty minutes worth of music. You can't tell me that
Foss wrote nothing else Newport Classics could have profitably put on the
program. That said, we have a very good performance of what should be an
American classic.
Most probably consider Foss a terror of the avant-garde, but he began
as one of the brightest lights of neo-classicism, studying with, among
others, Hindemith. A composing prodigy, he was likely fully formed in his
technique by the age of 18. He fled with his family from Germany during
the Thirties and from then until now, he has enjoyed one of the busiest and
most versatile musical careers in the United States: pianist, composer,
and conductor. For me, his greatest skill lies in his composing. I regard
him as a "natural," and the composer he reminds me of most is Mozart.
Everything seems to fit together perfectly, and one doesn't catch any extra
or superfluous notes. He has gone down so many composing paths with such
assurance and individuality that he has very likely written something one
would find beautiful or at least interesting. I admit my fondness for his
very early and very latest stuff, and I can't point to anything I've heard
as weak-minded or ugly.
Whenever he has taken up musical Americana, Foss has almost always
Romanticized his materials, very much like someone just off the boat.
Unlike Copland's or Bernstein's brand of Romanticism, Foss's ultimately
keeps an unassimilated distance, like the cute elderly couple in Casablanca
practicing their English. The miners in this brief opera are neither the
primitives of Puccini's La Fanciulla nor the mythic heroes of Copland's
West. However, they are also not, as in Twain himself, friends and
neighbors. They come closest to quaint comic peasants, a la the Bavarian
"peasant comedy" of Carl Orff's Der Mond.
On the other hand, very often Europeans tell us something about ourselves
we didn't know. Tocqueville's Democracy in America remains the standard
work on the subject. Foss's Americana shows us something of the sturdiness
of our folk songs and dances, as well as their vitality and suitability for
the larger structures of concert music. There's a scene of compositional
bravura, almost entirely based on the tune "Betsy from Pike." The changes
Foss works on the tune are stunning and surprising at the same time. Who
would have thought Sweet Betsy had it in her?
The overture reveals Foss's bifurcated sensibility: it never left Europe.
It's pretty and well-made, but neither special nor particularly "American."
By the first scene, however, Foss has plunked himself down in the mining
camp (at least as a tourist), and the interest - particularly the rhythmic
interest - picks up. The music sparkles, every note tells. Foss's
speech-setting, artificial as a Fruit Roll-Up, nevertheless comes across
as vernacular. It inhabits a twilight of neo-classicism, folk song,
and musical comedy. I feel as if I'm watching some gorgeous clockwork
mechanism reeling off fiddle tunes, waltzes, even scat. This isn't the
West as it was or even as Twain depicts it, but a loving homage to the
West by a master musical jeweler.
Foss does all things operatic very well indeed. The Stranger exposes his
true colors in a penetrating recitative and rousing aria ("Forty dollars
worth of money and a home-cooked meal"). Foss can construct whole scenes
- the gamblers' opening of scene two - with elaborate, effortless switches
from ensemble to solo and back. The ensembles, particularly the initial
praise of the frog-trainer, Smiley, may constitute the most outstanding
technical part of the opera. Colloquial phrases and rhythms come together
to generate complex rhythmic counterpoint and great drive. Foss writes
toe-tapping fugatos, if you can believe it. This is pretty music with no
apologies and goes a long way to disprove the incompatibility of beauty and
brains.
The opera delights and charms, as a miniature or a pocket watch does, but
it also lacks power and sweep. This comes down to genre only in part.
Verdi and Vaughan Williams manage to write epic comedies. Foss apparently
accepted a libretto which satisfied him, and he realized it beautifully.
However, one can't really call this great drama, but a divertissement.
One must accept it on those terms.
San Francisco's old After Dinner Opera Company recorded this way back
when, with piano accompaniment and delightfully hammy performances.
Kevin Deas, also on Chailly's Varese set, is properly oily as the scamming
Stranger. Julianne Baird plays the tender-hearted and slightly mercenary
Miss Lulu. Frederick Urrey, as Smiley, puts across naive pride in his
amphibious protege, Dan'l Webster, rather than the near-pathological
compulsion of Twain's gambler, but this is what Foss's libretto (by Jean
Karsavina) gives him. The libretto turns a typical Twain idea of human
weakness into a celebration of the small town against the wicked city
slicker. This recording improves upon the older in every way - voices,
full score rather than piano reduction, complete score - and keeps the
musical-comedy hamminess. The overture, I believe, appears in
commercially-recorded form for the first time, as does "Lulu's Song,"
originally furnished in the published score as an "addendum." The CD also
provides the libretto, although the singers' diction is good enough to
understand the action without such help.
Richard Auldon Clark and his Manhattan Chamber Orchestra play lively and
tight, and this CD is a worthy addition to their quite interesting
discography of American music. The sound is fine.
Steve Schwartz
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