Robert Savage
    An Eye-Sky Symphony

* Cowboy Nocturne (1975)*
* Sudden Sunsets (1989-93)
* Florida Poems (1984)
* An Eye-Sky Symphony (1988)**
* AIDS Ward Scherzo (1992)^
* Frost Free (1987)

Musicians Accord
David Del Tredici (piano)*
Polish Radio National Symphony/Joel Eric Suben**
Sara Laimon (piano)^
Total time: 61:22
CRI CD790

Summary for the Busy Executive: So-so.

Robert Savage died in 1993, age 42, of AIDS.  He studied with, among
others, Beeson, Weber, Rorem, Diamond, Corigliano, and Del Tredici.  After
his death, his friends put the money together to record these works and to
issue the CD.

Under the circumstances, I wish I liked it more.  A negative review becomes
almost beside the point and perhaps even cruel to those who survive him.
I didn't know him.  I know only the music.  In general, I find it bland.
I have no reason to listen to it again.  There's no moment of breathtaking
beauty, no tension, no individual quirk, nothing that grabs my ear.

Savage wrote the Eye-Sky Symphony when he first learned he had AIDS.
Of the works on this CD, this one interests me the most, but mainly for
the allusions to Ives's Unanswered Question that run through all of its
movements.  However, the interest raised is ultimately mild and doesn't
survive repeated hearings.  The argumentative thread in the symphony seems
more than a little slack, as it does throughout the CD's program.  I find
the third movement the most compelling, as Savage transforms his Ives
motives into a simple, lyric, diatonic tune.

The liner notes by Severine Neff make much of the "gay" mythology behind
Savage's work.  If so, I don't hear it, probably because I don't know how
to tell from the music itself whether a gay wrote it.  It seems to me that
composers are mainly themselves, rather than exhibits in this or that
specialized museum.  If love of Chopin and classic American pop are gay
traits, then I, too, am gay.  However, I thought these things were not one
group's exclusive property or badge of identity.  I have no idea whether
Savage himself subscribed to this nonsense and if not, he should be
protected from his friends.  From the Department of Compulsive Correction:
the liner notes call zydeco "a popular dance form." Zydeco is no more a
dance or form than rock and roll.  If anything, it's a genre.

The performances are mostly fine.  However, Sara Laimon's piano playing
seems just to sleepwalk through her portions.  This music needs a committed
champion, someone to make a strong case.  Soprano Christine Schadeberg
does beautifully in the Florida Poems, making emotional sense of Wallace
Stevens's slightly abstruse text.  She sings with a conversational freedom
and impeccable, colloquial diction.

Steve Schwartz