George Antheil, De Banfield, & William Schuman
        Ballets

* Antheil: Capital of the World (abridged)
* Schuman: Undertow
* De Banfield: The Combat

Ballet Theatre Orchestra/Joseph Levine
EMI 66548 MONO Total time: 71:38

Summary for the Busy Executive: The glory days of American ballet.

The above summary gives me pause.  I'm by no means knowledgeable about or
even a fan of ballet.  Too few dancers seem to me to have even a decent
sense of rhythm, let alone demonstrate musical understanding.  The same
goes for many choreographers.  To me ballet too often comes across as
leaping around for no good reason.  But there was a time when composers
gave ballet their best, perhaps inspired by Stravinsky's glorious example
(and his royalties) and by patrons with the wherewithal and the desire
to commission.  Great choreographers didn't hurt, either.  Many American
composers actively wanted to write for the likes of Graham, Balanchine,
De Mille, Limon, and Robbins.

For reasons having little to do with music, none of the dances here have
held on to the repertory, as the Stravinsky and Copland ballets have, for
example.  Even Samuel Barber's Cave of the Heart, written for Graham, lives
in its concert form as Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance.  I have
no idea why this should be so, but I suspect the current situation says
more about us than about the quality of the works.

Antheil based his Capital of the World on the Hemingway short story.
I prefer abstract to "story" ballets, but if you're determined to tell
a story, you might as well turn to a good storyteller for help.  Paco,
from the boondocks of Spain, dreams of becoming a bullfighter.  He arrives
in Madrid, for him "the capital of the world," to try to break in.  He
comes under the tutelage of a disillusioned bullfighter who resents Paco's
idealistic view of the profession.  In a practice session, with knives
tied to the legs of a chair, Paco is gored and dies.

As presented here in abridged form, the ballet is in three parts.
Virgil Thomson, whose taste for this sort of music I find absolutely
reliable, praised this score.  The music runs neither to Antheil's radical
experimentalism of the Twenties, nor to the Shostakovich echoes of his late
works.  Stravinsky's seems the largest influence.  The first part, which
sets up the plot, I think the weakest.  But the ballet really takes off in
the second, with flamenco occupying much of the score, including the sound
of the footwork (danced in the recording by Ballet Theatre's then-principal
dancer, Roy Fitzell).  Antheil considered this sound integral to the score,
and I, for what it may be worth, agree with him.  Fitzell and the orchestra
don't always match rhythmically, but it's closer by a lot than most dancers
I've seen.  Why the Jose Greco troupe could nail rhythm and ballet dancers
have such trouble with it remains a minor mystery.  The final movement
contains the music with the sharpest edges, and the Spanish influences
become sublimated to Stravinskian ones, particularly Le Sacre, without
any obvious quotes.

Undertow I think one of William Schuman's finest scores, hardly performed
or recorded.  He wrote it for Anthony Tudor, a choreographer habitually
drawn to the pretentious.  The libretto for this ballet, unfortunately, is
no exception.  It's supposedly a psychological account of a rapist-killer.
Tudor calls the character The Transgressor, so I know I'm in for a
long evening.  Indeed, every character in this mess has some sort of
faux-Jungian archetypal tag.  It never occurs to some people that a
character named Paco may be more universal than a character called The
Transgressor, and that the abstract doesn't necessarily translate into the
universal.  As the title implies, The Transgressor is driven to kill, and
yet realizes that he has indeed transgressed.  The libretto doesn't try to
resolve these contradictions, mainly because it's weak-minded.  I should
say, however, that I haven't seen this on stage, and the choreography may
save it.  Fortunately, the score stands strongly on its own.  Although
written in short sections to a narrative, Schuman doesn't overcome his
symphonic habits.  It's very tight - the idiom similar to his other works
of the time (say, the third symphony) - and Schuman writes at his most
inspired.  For me, it works as a short symphony.  The CD is worth having
for this piece alone.

Raffaello de Banfield, an Italian composer born, improbably enough, at
Newcastle upon Tyne, seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.
This and his opera Lord Byron's Love Letter are apparently the only two
of his works that have been remembered and (probably not a coincidence) to
have been recorded.  Banfield based The Combat on Tasso's La Gerusalemme
liberata, specifically the story of Tancred and Clorinda.  The idiom mixes
up Respighi with Hollywood Biblical epic.  The plot eminently suits the
ballet, with lots of opportunities for stylized battle-dances and a big
love scene.  I find the music attractive but slight, especially compared
to the Antheil and the Schuman.  Nevertheless, if you've got a sweet tooth
like me, you may well find yourself coming back to it.

The performances are rough, but exciting.  I do have problems with the
recorded sound - way too bright, especially in the Banfield, whose
orchestra emphasizes cymbals, brass, and high strings.  It's not the sort
of thing you want to listen to on a sinus headache.  For those of you who
care about such things, it's also mono.  Nevertheless, it barely affects
the Schuman, and I can live with it in the Antheil.  Centaur has recorded
what it bills as the "complete" Antheil ballet with Barry Kolman conducting
the Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra (CRC 2293), but it leaves out the
dancing - a serious omission.  Neither of the other two ballets have
available stereo recordings, as far as I know.  I consider this the better
choice, despite the sound.

Steve Schwartz