James DePriest
     American Contrasts

* Lees: Passacaglia for Orchestra
* Persichetti: Symphony No. 4
* Daugherty:
     - Philadelphia Stories for Orchestra: Sundown on South Street
     - Hell's Angels

Oregon Symphony/James DePriest
Delos DE3291 Total time: 61:24

Summary for the Busy Executive: Move, darn ya, move!

If nothing else, a wonderful program, with at least two classics of
American music.  Benjamin Lees's Passacaglia varies a basic idea with
great power.  The passacaglia, strictly speaking, pits variations over
a ground bass, although most composers from Brahms on, shift the bass
material around to all the voices, which Lees does as well.  Furthermore,
most composers from Bach on play the double game of creating arresting
individual variations and a rhetorically dramatic whole.  I gave Lees
an unexpectedly tough test by happening to listen to Bach's magnificent
c-minor Passacaglia and Fugue the day before, but Lees stands up very
well.  His invention appears immediately in his initial statement of
the ground, as little tics from the temple blocks decorate here and
there.  The tics translate to a figure for melody instruments in the
first variation.  There's also a gorgeous "chorale" variation for brass
and, most boldly, a full-unison restatement of the ground, as well as
slowed-down and sped-up statements.

The Persichetti, of course, has been an established work ever since its
first recording in the Fifties with Ormandy and the Philadelphia.  It's
pure American neo-classicism - not necessarily deep, but it doesn't have
to be.  Persichetti's trademark kinetic energy and meticulous craftsmanship
carry everything through.

The jokers in the pack are the Daugherties.  "Sundown on South Street"
is actually the opening movement to the composer's third symphony, titled
Philadelphia Stories.  Hell's Angels is a mini-concerto for, of all
things, bassoon quartet and orchestra.  Daugherty is one of those composers
one either is or isn't "with." His work has a distinct (even "in-your-face")
personality which both evokes American pop culture, particularly the low
and the kitsch, and takes its energy from it.  The music always seems
to ask the question, "You got a problem with that?" If the sight of
Grauman's Chinese Theatre or a Liberace stage costume doesn't thrill you
or your salivary glands refuse to move into overdrive at the thought of
a genuine Philly hero, Daugherty probably isn't for you.  I like this
stuff, so Daugherty very often appeals to me.  Even so, I find the music
uneven.  The opera Jackie O.  I thought horrible, musically and morally.
I once summed it up as "nasty, brutish, and short," and was especially
grateful for the last.  The Metropolis Symphony had both brilliant and
boring movements.  The pieces here, however, for me stand among his best.

"Sundown on South Street" captures the feel of Philadelphia's
polycultural "hot spot." Essentially, the sun goes down, and the place
jumps.  At first hearing, it may sound episodic, because Daugherty is a
virtuoso at varying both his material, especially rhythmically, and his
orchestration.  But almost everything derives from a small kit of ideas.
Pay especial attention to the rising scale at the very beginning.  Free
canons pervade the music, painting the sonic picture of a lot coming at
you from unexpected directions on your walk.  I particularly enjoyed the
super-sambas Daugherty fashions.

I never bought into the myth of the Hell's Angels as Romantic outlaws.
They seem to me mainly criminal sadists.  Even so, Daugherty's Hell's
Angels is an awfully good time, giving symphony musicians the opportunity
to play at bikers, booze, 'n' broads.  Massed bassoons can give an awfully
realistic impression of revvin' Harleys, and the music runs through the
schlock of gems like Blackboard Jungle, Broderick Crawford's Highway
Patrol, and, of course, The Wild One.  But there's a yearning, wistful
component to the music, as well as spectacularly independent lines of
rhythmic counterpoint, a fugue for the bassoons, and a manic handling
of the percussion section.  It's this tension between thoughtless and
thoughtful that makes the piece something more than an outrageous gag.

James DePriest and the Oregon Symphony give mostly okay professional
performances.  The notes are there.  I miss, however, any sense of larger
movement.  The energy of the music comes from the scores themselves.
There's very little sense of momentum from the conductor - the sense
that a piece goes from here to there.  The Persichetti particularly
suffers, especially if you know the Ormandy performance (available on
Albany TROY276).  Indeed, it's like hearing two different works - one a
genteel plate of steamed vegetables, the other something beefy and racing.
The Lees performance fails to convey the larger rhetoric of the work,
although the players do beautifully by individual variations.  The
Daugherty accounts amount to little more than extended blares.  This
obviously comes down to the conductor.  I've heard much better from
DePriest before.  Maybe he had an off-week.

Nevertheless, I recommend this, because you can't get the Lees or the
Daugherties anywhere else.

Steve Schwartz