William Neil & David Baker
           Concerted Works

* Neil: Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra
* Baker:
    - Concert Piece for Viola and Orchestra
    - Concerto for Cello and Chamber Orchestra

Sharon Polifrone (violin), Paul Silverthorne (viola), Milos Jahoda (cello)
Czech National Symphony Orchestra/Paul Freeman
Albany TROY559  TT: 75:38

Summary for the Busy Executive: Terrific performances of mainly okay works.

While certainly true that a first encounter through a terrible account
may temporarily turn you off to a great work (happened to me with Brahms's
violin concerto), a really good performance of something at third or
fourth level may influence you to credit a composer more than you should.
There's nothing awful about any of the three works here.  All of them
are at least capably written, with a vein of real poetry through them
besides.  One might well ask the question, however, if the "aesthetic
goodness" of a work isn't inherent in the music, how performers produce
it.

Obviously, listener, performer, and composer collaborate in each
musical experience.  For me, movies serve as the model of collaborative
art.  A very good director like Milos Forman and very good actors like
Tom Hulce and F.  Murray Abraham can be sunk by a very bad script like
Amadeus.  A great movie like Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight needs a
great audience.  A very good movie like Shane succeeds in spite of a
cliche-ridden script.  However, we try to diagnose the weakness and
assign credit and blame to those who deserve them.

Of the three concerti on the program, I liked William Neil's Rhapsody
best.  I've never heard anything by Neil before, but this piece makes
me want to hear more.  The composer has misnamed the work somewhat.
Although it aims to convey the improvisatory singing of a Greek rhapsod,
most evident in the opening, it is nevertheless tightly-written.  Its
best moments I find in the quicker portions, and they seem to derive
from Benjamin Britten, with an extremely characteristic harmonic world.
They make an intense, brilliant effect, reminiscent somewhat of Young
Apollo.  Nevertheless, it does go on for about twenty-five minutes,
not all of it gold.  The slower, "non-metered" portions strike me as
predictable.  I keep waiting for something else to happen and thus give
thanks when the composer gives the music a pulse again.

Most listeners know David Baker as a composer who incorporates jazz
elements into his concert work.  The viola "concert piece" and cello
concerto stand as exceptions to the general picture.  Baker has built
up a huge catalogue over the years (somewhere around twenty concerti
alone).  I think of him as a "messy" composer -- that is, a lot of notes,
many of which don't do much but litter up the texture.  Again, these two
pieces run counter to my preconception.  Both owe more to mainstream
concert music than to jazz, and both eschew florid textures.  Hearing
the viola concert piece (three movements -- moderate, slow, fast --
played without pause), an ambitious work of more than half an hour, I
found that the phrase "Very Eastman" leapt to my mind, by which I mean
full of craft and a genteel, almost faceless lyricism.  Baker builds a
symphonic argument -- impressively, across movements -- but you have
only to listen to, say, Walton's concerto or to Bloch's suite to see
Baker's effort as a "nice" but not terrifically exciting or memorable
work.  I begin to long for Baker's old "mess" -- evidence of a mind with
so many ideas he can't find a place for them all.

The cello concerto improves things.  The rhythms become more incisive,
the cello and the orchestra generate real drama.  The lyrical bits don't
remind you of weak-tea pop from the Forties.  The ideas themselves, as
well as the instrumental textures, are more interesting.  The concerto
runs two-thirds of the concert-piece's length and is all the better for
the concision.  Some jazzy bits make their way into the finale, but
overall this concerto, well-made and interesting as it is, doesn't really
stand out from dozens of other cello concerti.  One feels as though one
looks at an expensive, solidly-built, but not aesthetically distinctive
house.

The performances, on the other hand, give all these pieces a lot of
help.  Paul Silverthorne is simply the finest violist I've ever heard.
Despite "big-shoulder" passages for the orchestra and what I regard as
tacked-on cadenzas for display, the work's engine moves to a lyrical
pulse.  Silverthorne has a warm, rich tone, and he can sing like nobody's
business.  But it's a bit like Sinatra doing "L.A.  is My Lady": one
hears singing, but no real song.  If Silverthorne can't make more out
of Baker's Konzertstuck, odds are nobody else can.  Neither Silverthorne
nor Freeman overcome the tendency of the work to fall apart into sections.
Given their performances elsewhere, I again suspect the composer.

No such reservations about violinist Sharon Polifrone, but Neil has
given her something to work with.  Again, the music moves mainly lyrically,
and Polifrone sings sweetly, with a slightly intense edge, and amazingly
in tune.  Furthermore, her intonation contributes to the intensity of
the performance, lifting the piece over its few leaden parts.  Even in
the "muscle" passages, she gets power with only the slightest loss of
lyricism.  The cello soloist, Milos Jahoda, gets huge sounds out of his
instrument,or maybe they miked him close.  But it's a big tone, at any
rate.  Jahoda plays far less suavely than either Silverthorne or Polifrone,
but Baker's concerto can stand the rough.  The Czech National Symphony
does well, though not sensationally well, by these scores.  Freeman,
when given a crumb of something meaningful to do, contributes his own
sparks.  Most important, he in large part shapes the scores so that one
gets a sense of the entire span, rather than bits and pieces.  Baker's
viola work stops him, but it also stops Silverthorne.

The recorded sound is a bit harsh and a little dead.  You don't get a
lot of lush here, which would work to Neil's advantage.  On the other
hand, it suits Baker's cello concerto.  Soloists are a too forward in
the balance.  Though a quantum leap better in sound, it nevertheless
reminded me of some of the old CRI concerto LPs.

Steve Schwartz