Raymond Leppard
American Dreams
* Chadwick: "Noel" from Symphonic Sketches
* Barber: Adagio for Strings
* Foote: "Pizzicato & Adagietto" from Suite in E for string orchestra
* Carpenter: Sea Drift
* Canning: Fantasy on a Hymn Tune
* Gershwin: Lullaby
* Carmichael: "Prayer & Cathedral Vision" from Johnny Appleseed Suite
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra/Raymond Leppard
Decca 458 157-2 Total time: 61:44
Summary for the Busy Executive: Mostly pleasant dreams, lovingly played.
I first encountered Raymond Leppard as the brilliant harpsichordist in
Barbirolli's recording of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. Since then, Leppard
has continued as one of the finest conductors of his time - a supreme
interpreter (non-HIP) of Handel and the Baroque and an incredible musician
on everything else he's turned his hand to, including a landmark recording
of the Virgil Thomson opera The Mother of Us All. For years he's headed
the Indianapolis Symphony, and to some extent this has hidden his light,
since media don't focus much attention on "secondary" cities. But Leppard
has the rare ability to get music not only to move, but to bounce and
to sing with lovely tone.
Few of the works on the program, excepting the Barber, are all that well
known. I'd never even heard of Thomas Canning before this CD, although
I've since found the same work on a Telarc sampler and the Gothic catalogue
lists a fugue from an organ sonata. I generally think of potpourris
like this as mixed bags. Too often they fail to satisfy: you either
don't care to hear the piece again, or the excerpt whets your appetite
to hear the complete work. To some extent, that's the case here.
Chadwick and Foote, although they lingered into the Thirties, really
come from the late Nineteenth Century, musically speaking. Both belonged
to the so-called "Boston school," which also included Horatio Parker
(Ives's teacher) and Amy Beach. I tend also to associate them with
Edward MacDowell (even though his career was mainly in New York), purely
on musical grounds. They pretty much shared a certain point of view:
Romantic, deriving from Schumann and to some extent Liszt and Raff.
Within that narrow range, however, each has a distinct voice. Furthermore,
for each the modern music of the time touched them: in the case of a
late Nineteenth-Century American composer, this would have meant Tchaikovsky
and Dvorak, both of whom had huge successes in New York and Boston in
the 1890s. Dvorak influenced even the early Ives.
I happen to believe both Chadwick and Foote get short shrift from those
who think music can justify itself only by profundity. When Chadwick
tries for something beyond the lyrical or poetic, the music begins to
oversell itself. Foote's reach, in contrast, never exceeds a modest
grasp. Schumann's "character pieces" lurk behind Chadwick's Symphonic
Sketches. Each of Chadwick's sketches paints a picture: "Jubilee,"
"Noel," "Hobgoblin," and "A Vagrom Ballad." Chadwick manages to expand
the short lyrical sketch to something genuinely symphonic a good deal
of the time, but the effect remains something like a musical Washington
Irving, rather than Whitman or Melville. "Noel" begins quietly and
poetically, depicting the first Christmas Eve. The opening is the same
kind of slow music as the "New World" largo, without the genius touches
(like the opening chordal passage) that distinguish the Dvorak.
Nevertheless, Chadwick comes up with something beyond imitation and
cliche. However, Chadwick runs into trouble when he pushes for the Big
Climax about two-and-a-half minutes from the end. It fails to convince,
mainly because it's simply what we've heard before, only louder and to
accompanying throbbing triplets. It reveals nothing really new about
the musical material. Still, two out of three cheers.
The pizzicato part of Foote's "Pizzicato & Adagietto" comes from
Tchaikovsky - pieces like the Serenade in C for Strings and the Fourth
Symphony scherzo. The work is really an adagio in a pizzicato frame,
and it's the gently melancholic adagio where Foote steps out as himself.
But the pizzicato is fun and not horribly imitative. The movement whets
my appetite for Foote's entire Suite, available on the Albany label in
a program of the Boston school.
Barber's Adagio I've written about before, and in detail. It has long
established itself as an American classic. Indeed, some over-enthusiast
released a CD of just about all, if not all, sanctioned arrangements of
the piece. As much as I love the work, a full CD of it over and over
again daunts me. For me, the version to beat is Schippers and the New
York Phil on Sony MHK 62837. Leppard's version is modest, tasteful,
and clean. Leppard keeps the lid on and gets the orchestra to build
and fall back with fine judgment - the interpretively difficult part
of the piece. Apparently, Leppard (according to the liner notes) wants
to connect to the madrigals and consort music that originally inspired
Barber. It's certainly one way to hear the Adagio, but I miss the fire
of Schippers and those glorious New York strings.
John Alden Carpenter, a wealthy Chicago businessman who as a composer
began slightly later than either Chadwick or Foote, fell early under for
the spell of Impressionism. Later, he incorporated jazz and other modern
developments into his music. For me, he definitely falls into the
category of Minor Composer, and I confess to not liking his Impressionist
work very much. Even second-string composers like Griffes and Dukas did
it much better. I prefer his more angular Skyscrapers, near-Surrealistic
ballet Krazy Kat, and his Gershwinesque piano concertino. Sea Drift,
of course, calls to my mind Delius's score with the same name as well
as Debussy's La Mer, neither of which comparison does Carpenter much
good. It's almost all atmosphere and little substance, although it's
beautifully orchestrated. There are even little "steals" from Debussy
here and there. I've complained about the "noodling around" of
post-Wagnerians. This is the Impressionist equivalent and rather
weak-sister stuff when you remember that its inspiration derives in part
from Whitman. Leppard, however, makes a great case for the work, far
stronger than Hegyi on New World.
Thomas Canning, who studied composition at Oberlin and Eastman, died in
his forties. As I say, I know only his Fantasy on a Hymn Tune, based
on Justin Morgan's Amanda. Morgan belonged, like the more famous William
Billings, to the New England school of singing-masters. As a composer,
he interests me even more than Billings does, especially harmonically -
with unresolved semitonal dissonances sprinkled through his work. The
text of Amanda (both the name of Morgan's wife and of a town in his
native Vermont) is a fairly popular one of the time, and several composers
set it: "Death, like an ever-flowing stream / Sweeps us away." I'm of
two minds about what Canning has done. On the one hand, he's written a
beautiful piece for strings, very much in the line of Vaughan Williams's
Fantasia on a Theme by Tallis, particularly in the way he plays with
various subgroups within the overall string ensemble. But Morgan isn't
Tallis. His music is rougher and more biting. Canning smooths out all
this. So while Vaughan Williams seems to extend Tallis, Canning glosses
over the harshness of Morgan. Would this even be relevant if I didn't
know the original setting of Amanda? Probably not, but I do, so it
bothers me.
In about 1919, Gershwin wrote his Lullaby for string quartet as an
instrumentation exercise for his teacher Edward Kilyeni. It interests
me in that it predates not only Rhapsody in Blue, but also Gershwin's
Broadway (though not popular) success. It shows, if nothing else, that
Gershwin wanted to go beyond songwriting early on. The piece lasts about
8.5 minutes, but it's really a long song rather than an instrumental
movement, with variation due primarily to instrumentation changes rather
than thematic transformation. However, the scoring is highly effective
and even unusual, considering the inherently monochromatic nature of a
string ensemble, and the basic musical idea (there's really only one in
the entire piece) hypnotizes. Gershwin never wanted to publish the work,
although he did hand out private copies to string-playing friends, and
because of Gershwin's name and saleability, someone finally did publish
it. It's a morceau, but an enchanting one. I'm happy to know it.
Hoagy Carmichael, another great songwriter (if he wrote only "Skylark,"
he'd be that), hankered to compose large instrumental works, like Gershwin.
Late in life, financially bolstered by his royalties (I wonder what he
made on "Stardust" alone), he embarked on a series of them. Gershwin,
however, was an original as well as a genius. Carmichael seems more
than a little at sea in a concert hall. He loses his usual raffish charm
in this excerpt from his orchestral suite Johnny Appleseed. It's all
rather bland stuff. The only thing worth mentioning is the slick scoring,
undertaken (according to the notes) by "Van Cleve and Dant," by which I
assume they mean Nathan Van Cleave and Charles Dant, two Hollywood
orchestrators (Carmichael had a lovely movie career as well). Other
than that, for me it's pretty much a wasted track.
Leppard and his Hoosiers nevertheless do an exquisite job on everything.
The orchestral sound itself is beautiful, the shaping of phrases lovely
and detailed, and the overall flow of each piece unimpeded. Leppard
knows how to tell the musical tale, especially evident in the Gershwin,
which can pall in less committed performances. Based on the Chadwick
and Foote, I especially want to revisit Leppard's Dvorak and Tchaikovsky.
Steve Schwartz
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