George Antheil

* Symphony No. 4 ("1942")
* Symphony No. 6
* McKonkey's Ferry (Washington at Trenton); A Concert Overture

National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine/Theodore Kuchar
Naxos 8.559033 Total time: 67:43

Summary for the Busy Executive: Possessed.

It's hard to be a radical, to reinvent all the time.  George Antheil -
with Gershwin, the most innovative American composer of the Twenties
and the only one whom one can compare to the aesthetic cluster of Pound,
Stein, Cummings, Stevens, and Moore in aim and achievement - hit the
ground running with a string of remarkable works: A Jazz Symphony, the
notorious Ballet mecanique, the "Airplane" and "Jazz" piano sonatas, and
the second violin sonata (with drum), among others.  The Twenties were
Antheil's decem anni mirabiles.  Increasingly, he became less the Bad
Boy of Music and more the well-behaved neoclassicist, Stravinsky branch.
The music of Shostakovich also touched him.  Although he strenuously
denied the influence, one can hear the Soviet composer throughout Antheil's
Fourth Symphony.  Antheil died, relatively young and little regarded,
with the work that brought him into prominence in the first place pretty
much forgotten in the post-World War II musical environment.  One problem
musical polemics almost always drag along is the revision of history.
From the Fifties through the Seventies, one side repeatedly told us there
was only one valid Modern Music (liberals in this camp sometimes made
an exception of Bartok) - the twelve-tone road to aesthetic Shambala.
I remember one professor confessing to me - always looking over his
shoulder to see whether the agents of the inquisition could overhear -
that he rather liked Gershwin).  Of course, there was enough idiocy to
go around in the opposite camp as well.

All the works here come from the Forties.  McKonkey's Ferry, the first
track, hits you like a giant Acme anvil, more for its in-your-face
Shostakovich "Leningrad" references (with a little of Prokofiev's "Battle
on the Ice" from Nevsky thrown in) as anything else.  You'd swear
Shostakovich wrote it.  The Soviet composer, of course, reached a popular
peak in the Forties, unfortunately accompanied by a critical low.  Critics
weren't all that happy with the original, whom they considered a facile
sell-out, and they really jumped on Antheil, who understandably became
defensive to the point where he disclaimed any Shostakovich influence
at all.  The passage of years has raised Shostakovich's stock tremendously.
It may also raise Antheil's later output.  After all, what's wrong with
another Shostakovich work, even if it's not by Shostakovich?  Antheil's
result (the only thing that counts) is by no means shabby.  It may very
well be a case of one composer so completely absorbing another that his
artistic impulses fuse with the other's mode of expression.  Antheil,
however, set great store by originality - in my opinion, too much.

McKonkey's Ferry (the title refers obliquely to Washington's famous
crossing of the Delaware; American themes expressed in "American" music
were also pretty big in the Thirties and Forties) moves along on vigorous
Soviet motor rhythms and some fantastic scoring.  The piece isn't
particularly descriptive and whatever links to Washington Antheil may
have had in mind remain there: they never made it to the page.  Fortunately,
the overture is wonderful in its own right.  It's mostly a quick allegro,
with a brief slow and reflective march toward the end before the allegro
catches fire again and dashes to the finish.  The overture lasts about
nine minutes, and to bring off music of such relentless drive for so
long and to satisfy the need of variety and contrast is very difficult
to bring off.  One might, I think, favorably compare this with Shostakovich's
rambunctious Festive Overture.

One also hears Shostakovich in the Symphony No.  4, but it hardly matters.
This is one exciting symphony, very well put together indeed.  It mixes
cyclic procedures with classical thematic transformations in an interesting
way.  It begins with a sharply-etched "motto," which shows up, either
as itself or in various guises, in the other three movements.  In the
second movement, for example, it appears pretty much as itself, while
in the trio of the scherzo third, Antheil transforms it into a fugal
subject.  Other themes as well turn up in more than one movement, but
there's nothing mechanical about the repetition, the feeling one sometimes
gets from cyclical works.  At the remove of sixty years, the echoes of
the Soviet composer matter less than Antheil's creation of a sharply-focused,
highly dramatic work.  If you didn't know who wrote it or the circumstances
of its composition, the question of imitation or pastiche probably
wouldn't occur to you.  The work impresses all on its own.

The Sixth Symphony, written six years later in 1948, shows Antheil coming
out from under the Shostakovian idiom and into an unusual mix of Forties
Americana (one of the first-movement themes quotes "The Battle Cry of
Freedom") with an "international" push.  Some Shostakovich lingers, but
one also notes passages that share the sound of Bartok as well as an
intense lyricism which belongs only to Antheil.  The first movement
changes views and tempi in what seems like every few bars or so.  It's
as if Antheil's mind raced from one thing to the next.  Paradoxically,
it comes across not as the work of a scattered mind, but of a very clear
one indeed.  The second movement begins as an update of a Satie Gymnopedie,
but this comes from its rhythm and bass line only.  The harmonies are
much too slide-y for Satie.  A contrasting middle sings like Prokofiev,
with lush orchestration to match.  It could have come out of Romeo and
Juliet.  Again, what matters is not the answer to "Name That Composer,"
but how well Antheil speaks in the voices he's chosen.

Although the rondo finale appropriates themes from earlier movements,
the ideas seem to try too hard the second time around.  Again, Antheil
shifts mood and character swiftly, even abruptly, but this time loses
the edge of his argument.  I consider this the weakest movement of
the two symphonies, even though I can't deny that its rousing,
bring-'em-to-their-feet end probably will bring 'em to their feet.

For those of us who've endured years of make-do performances of Antheil's
music, Kuchar and his Ukrainians snap our garters.  Kuchar brings out
the tremendous kinetic power of these scores, and the orchestra stays
on top of every attack.  They even sing and maintain very fine balance
among the parts.  There's nothing muddy here.  Above all, Kuchar and his
players have sussed out Antheil's aims and expressive content, perhaps
because of their familiarity with Shostakovich and Prokofiev.  They
always know where the point of the phrase lies.  If they show a weakness,
it's in conveying the larger structural shape, but then again the composer
doesn't give them a lot of help.

Very fine recorded sound.

Steve Schwartz