Christopher Rouse
    World Premiere Recordings

* Symphony No. 2 (1994)
* Flute Concerto (1993)
* Phaeton (1986)

Carol Wincenc (flute),
Houston Symphony/Christoph Eschenbach
Total time: 65:29
Telarc CD-80452

Summary for the Busy Executive: Risky business.

Now in his fifties, Rouse has outgrown the Young Man of Promise label
and become one of the most prominent of American composers.  As far
as I'm concerned, he deserves his success.  His influences range from
classic maverick George Crumb to scion of Modernism Karel Husa to academic
serialist Richard Hoffman.  From Crumb, he seems to have inherited a sharp
ear for new instrumental sonorities, from Husa a sense of drama, and from
Hoffman the ability to write a coherent long piece.  His rather eclectic
idiom is really no longer controversial, and he hasn't indulged for a while
in the kind of conceptual stunts one might have alleged against some of
his earlier works (eg, the nevertheless brilliant Gorgon).  He still,
however, takes risks, although he's left behind the superficial, easily
apprehensible kind.  In fact, they're bigger - his commitment to clarifying
his artistic personality perhaps the largest of all.

After an early interest in loud sounds and in rock, Rouse has become more
and more Romantic, in the same sense as a composer like Barber.  He differs
from Barber in that he doesn't seem able to come up with a genius tune,
although his music brims full with memorable and affecting passages.  He
shares with Barber a dedication to individual expression and a sense of
what music should do for you - music as the expression and engenderer
primarily of emotion.  I believe Rouse's music some of the most heart-felt
now being written.

I began to view Rouse in this way with his trombone concerto (RCA
09026-68510), and the second symphony reinforces my impression.  In three
movements, played without a break, the symphony begins deceptively, as
a more-or-less neoclassic toccata.  As the movement progresses, however,
it becomes gradually more disturbed and disturbing.  Beneath the bubbling
sixteenths an obsessive rhythm, a rat-a-tat on a repeated note with a
semitone fillip on the end, adds to the feeling of desperation.  The
movement ends on the rat-a-tat shouted out by the orchestra.  Abruptly
we find ourselves in a dead calm of an adagio - Carlyle's Centre of
Indifference.  The death of composer Stephen Albert inspired this movement,
which sings mainly of the numbness of grief.  Beneath the keening, however,
we gradually hear a variation of the obsessive rhythm of the first
movement, growing more and more insistent and driving the orchestra to a
massive outcry and (just when you think there's nothing more to give) an
even more massive outcry, before subsiding once more into indifference.
It's a long slide into practically nothing - a few soft strokes on the bass
drum and fragments on a solo wind (heart and breath?).  A quick crescendo
leads to the third movement, which in a sense continues the first.  Again,
the neoclassic toccata percolates, but in the light of the adagio, with a
hornet's rage.  The semitone fillip is now an idea in the foreground - at
times morphing into the B-A-C-H theme (B-flat A C B).  At other times, the
rhythm evokes that of the opening movement of Beethoven's Fifth.  It ends
with a series of hammer blows, with the volume way up.

Rouse pulls off the same trick as many great composers:  he gets you to
think of the emotions "behind" the notes.  That is, one feels that music
so powerful must mean something.  The symphony's considerable skill serves
the emotional wallop it delivers.  He puts all his materials and maneuvers
in plain sight, almost like the magician who obligingly shows you that
there's nothing up his sleeve before he dumbfounds you.  For a composer,
clarity of procedure, idea, and intent are among the greatest risks, since
you'd better have something worth saying.  If not, the lameness will become
apparent right away.

The flute concerto is a lighter affair, although one can scarcely call
it lightweight.  Rouse was inspired both by Celtic folksong and the death
in England of two-year-old James Bulger at the hands of two older children,
both ten.  Here, among other things, Rouse shows what he can do with a
melody.  In the opening movement, the flute sings serenely against the
orchestral strings in held chords.  It's rapt, but I doubt you will
remember the tune.  I certainly don't.  Nevertheless, it stirs my blood.
The second movement bursts in abruptly, like revelers throwing open a door
- a symphonic jig.  The third movement, an elegy to the murdered child,
is sad, but cool, working through the conventions of the musical elegy -
the slow march, low, dark timbres, chorales, and so on.  The melodic line
begins dissonantly, but softly.  Gradually, a chorale of great nobility (or
rather a magnificent chord progression repeated over and over - it's so
wonderful, I couldn't get enough of it) comes out of the orchestra - first
for strings alone, then for brass, then for winds, separated by accompanied
cadenzas for solo flute.  For the woodwind statement of the "chorale," the
flute joins in.  The movement, haunting and poetic, ends on a pure "amen"
cadence.

The fourth movement, yet another jig, dances in a marginally more folk-like
way than its earlier counterpart.  I hear little bits of Holst's "Mercury"
sneaking in, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Rouse didn't
consciously appropriate.  The resemblance probably comes down to the
character of the rhythm and the mercurial changes of orchestration.

The finale, like the first movement, has the flute singing against
rapturous chords.  It's not a song so much as it is the heart of song.
Rouse seems to get down to the ancient power of music in this quiet finale,
ending the concerto as it began - with a brief brush of the harp.

The earliest work on the disc, Phaeton, was inspired by the Challenger
disaster.  It's an effective, dramatic piece, but it does show in a way
a young composer unable or unwilling to trust himself.  Although the piece
moves in a clear way, the ideas are a bit overly complex, the orchestration
a tad too thick, and the percussion over-relied on.  One sees the
difference immediately between this and the symphony, a work no less
powerful or capable but far more memorable, mostly because the composer has
stronger faith in the worth of his basic materials.  All that said, I can
imagine composers wishing they had written it.  The eclecticism of the
piece (a fanfare on massed horns, for example, reminiscent of the finale
of the Barber piano concerto) matters less than its considerable impact.
It has the sole disadvantage that Rouse now would have done better.

Zinman and the Baltimore work wonders with this music.  It can't be easy
to play, and yet the rhythms are sharply articulated and the busy textures
marvelously clear.  I know very little about what constitutes a good flute
player, so I really can't criticize Wincenc intelligently.  She takes no
horrible misstep, and the tone sounds good.  On the other hand, most of my
kicks in the concerto come from Zinman and the orchestra rather than from
her.  Despite these criticisms, this CD represents a highlight of my year.

Sound is Telarc's usual wonderful.

Steve Schwartz