John Corigliano

* Tournaments Overture*
* Elegy*
* Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
* Gazebo Dances

James Tocco, piano; The Louisville Orchestra/Sidney Harth,* Lawrence
Leighton Smith
First Edition FECD-0002  TT: 67:44

Summary for the Busy Executive: Lively performances.

I must admit whatever charm John Corigliano's music may have has mostly
failed to bind me.  I keep reading comparisons of his work to Barber's,
and I shake my head in mystification.  It makes me wonder what people
are listening to in Barber.  Barber's music, after all, has a personality,
and Barber's strong composing suit lay in his talent for finding genius,
memorable themes, no matter how "modern" he got.  As far as I know,
Corigliano has nothing in his catalogue that qualifies as super-wonderful
and no theme that sticks.  No longer a Young Man of Promise, shouldn't
he have come up with something by now?  For me, most of the time he
merely spins notes, and soporific ones at that.  On the other hand, he's
won a Pulitzer, so thank heaven he doesn't have to depend on me for a
living.

Nevertheless, the works here, from thirty and forty years ago, show why
people took notice of him in the first place.  The piano concerto, the
Elegy, and the Tournaments Overture have appeared on recording before
(as part of Slatkin's American music series on RCA), as have the Gazebo
Dances in their original two-piano form.  All the music on the disc is
at least well-made, and some of it is even lively.  It reminds me somewhat
of the old Kaufman and Hart play Merrily We Roll Along, where action
proceeds mainly in reverse -- a cynical S.O.B.  becomes more and more
idealistic and his life brighter and brighter as he grows younger.
I can't shake the feeling that Corigliano dried up fairly quickly.

We, however, begin at the beginning.  Tournaments (1965) skips like lambs
in springtime.  Written in the idiom of classic American Modernism, it
represents, first of all, a daring, a dissatisfaction with the prevailing
post-Webernian serialism of the time.  It's definitely young man's music,
not simply because of its high spirits, but because it searches for an
individual voice by trying on others, including Bernstein's and Amram's.
The Elegy, from the same year, shows much the same thing.  This time the
voices are Barber's, Bernstein's, and Ravel's.  The opening theme, for
example, varies slightly the opening to Ravel's Introduction and Allegro.
I don't find anything wrong with this because both pieces convince you
all by themselves.  But the influences go pretty much unassimilated.
Eventually, Corigliano has to show up with something as good and really
his own.

The Piano Concerto (1968) ranks as the most ambitious score on the
program (as well as perhaps my favorite Corigliano work), not only
in its length, but for Corigliano searching out himself, exploring
and testing his expressive range.  It owes a lot to the Barber concerto
of 1962, both in idiom and in rhetorical structure, although the large
formal features differ.  Little bits of the Bernstein symphonies also
show up from time to time.  Corigliano points out sections of freely
atonal and dodecaphonic music, but if he had said nothing, I doubt anyone
would have known -- an eminently tonal work over all.  The first movement
plays with two short, extremely fertile ideas -- one aggressive, the
other lyrical.  In the course of the movement, they switch characters.
Corigliano creates a wonderful argument and transformation, full of
interest and, even more important, direct communication with the listener.
One can easily isolate the source of many of the moments in other
composers, but for once it doesn't matter.  The second movement, a short
scherzo, is light compared only with the first movement.  It hardly
counts as fun and games -- plenty of malice runs through it.  The concerto
falls down, as far as I'm concerned, from the slow movement on.  While
Corigliano has conceived an intriguing rhetorical structure for the
"Andante Appassionata" (the music pares down to a single line which runs
directly into the last movement), the musical material itself doesn't
really stick.  I don't expect something as wonderful as the slow movements
to the Barber and the Ravel concerti, but I don't want the music to
dissolve without a trace, either.  The rondo finale sums up the thematic
content so far.  However, the main rondo theme sounds like Barber's
rejected sketches to the finale of his piano concerto, before he got the
brilliant idea of putting the meter into 5/8.  Corigliano is just too
damn close.  There's a nice touch where Corigliano brings back the opening
motto at the very end for a shot of energy, but mostly one has heard it
all before, and not just from Corigliano.

The Gazebo Dances (1974) is attractive without special distinction,
except for the last movement, a manically dippy tarantella.  For those
who know the two-piano version, the orchestration substantially changes
the character of the piece.  The bright, percussive textures of the
pianos make clear the links to Stravinsky, particularly to things like
the 3 Easy Pieces and the 5 Easy Pieces.  On the other hand, the orchestral
colors bring the work much closer to Barber's Souvenirs, and in the slow
movement at least, the composer indulges a characteristically Barberian
tone of nostalgic yearning.  Oddly enough, this movement is the only one
on the program I can find where composer Corigliano has finally shown
up, speaking for once not through others, but for himself, and he has
something to say.

If you have the Slatkin program, I see very little reason, other than
indulgence, to duplicate with this CD. On the other hand, the duplicates,
though less finely played by Smith's Louisville than by Slatkin's St.
Louis, move with a lot more vim in Kentucky, and I prefer Tocco to Douglas
in the concerto.  Douglas has a more powerful tone, but Tocco gets the
neurotic, demonic energy of the piece.  If I started from scratch, I
would definitely choose this over the Slatkin.  The sound is brighter
than on the RCA recording, but I can live with it.

This marks the second release (as far as I can tell from the recording
number) of the Santa Fe Music Group's First Edition.  Apparently, they
have acquired for re-release all the recordings of the classic Louisville
Orchestra commissioning series -- a project that taught me a lot and
introduced me to music I never would have heard otherwise.  Lovers of
American and modern music, take notice.

Steve Schwartz