Benjamin Lees

* Andrew Bishop: Crooning
* Allen Shawn: Concerto for Piano
* Paul Creston: Dance Overture
* Benjamin Lees: Concerto for Piano #2

Ursula Oppens, piano (Shawn)
Ian Hobson, piano (Creston)
Albany Symphony Orchestra/David Alan Miller
Albany TROY441 Total time: 73.55

Summary for the Busy Executive: Two piano concerti, no errors, one hit.

The Albany label has come up with yet another very interesting CD of
American music.  I'd not heard of either Bishop or Shawn before, so like
any other collector, I welcomed the discovery.  At least I've heard their
music.  I find Bishop far more interesting than Shawn.

One of my big ideas is that vernacular music - in all centuries but the
Twentieth - has routinely invigorated art music.  In the past one hundred
years or so, many have regarded vernacular music as worthless, or even
unclean.  Witness the current tirades against hip-hop, for example.  Sadly,
this attitude occurred with the rise of American pop, one of the most vital
and various vernaculars.  Elliott Carter, for example, pays homage to Ives
but avoids the culture that inspired Ives.  Andrew Bishop studied at the
University of Michigan with Bolcom, Albright, and Daugherty - all of whom
have used American pop to give their music a shot in the arm.  He's also
worked in jazz orchestras.  Crooning, as its title suggests, draws on
the sound of big bands and big-band singers.  It begins with a kind of
Daugherty vamp, vivacious and slightly jittery.  A solo violin begins to
wail soulfully against the vamp.  Little by little, the sound of the Nelson
Riddle Orchestra on a ballad begins to intrude, and we have a conflict
between the jumpy bit and the ballad.  The ballad takes over more and more,
and the motives that we've heard up to this point from everybody begin to
coalesce into a melodic idea that seems the blueprint for "Fly Me to the
Moon." The pop ideas exist on a rather abstract plane and jostle against
ideas not pop at all.  Bishop doesn't simply appropriate, any more than
Bolcom does in, say, his second violin sonata.  All in all, a very poetic
piece, and the poetry is complicated.

Creston's Dance Overture comes from the early Fifties, sort of the
tail end of the peak in the composer's reputation.  Creston, an American
original, belonged to no school and, indeed, largely taught himself how to
compose.  He has a voice instantly recognizable, although his music derives
harmonically from French composers like Debussy and Ravel.  Nevertheless,
he sees those harmonies from a less-lush viewpoint.  His rhythmic ideas
resemble no one else's.  Despite at least one very good symphony (his
second), he comes across mainly as a great composer of light music - light
not only in its lack of pretension, but in the brightness of its orchestral
color and in its buoyancy.  Dance Overture typifies him at his best, with
jumpy little rhythmic cells coming together to create a larger, longer
stride.  Like the Bishop, this is eminently accessible music without
condescension.

To me, the most interesting thing about Allen Shawn is that he is the son
of the great New Yorker editor William and the brother of dramatist and
actor Wallace.  He's had a number of good teachers, including Kirchner and
Boulanger, and a relatively successful career, with recordings, awards, and
fellowships to his credit.  This is the first piece of his I've heard, and
I simply don't click with it.  I know technically what's going on, but it
fails to grab me emotionally.  It strikes me as well-written and way too
refined for its own artistic good - a genteel pastel.  I yearn for even
one cheap moment in the piece.  I had trouble following it, mainly because
I kept forgetting the main ideas, including a flute and oboe duet that
has great consequences later on in the concerto.  I had to write the ideas
down before the work made detailed sense to me.  This might mean that the
ideas aren't very memorable in themselves and that no amount of repetition
strengthens them.  This is true of at least three of the movements,
especially the first, which aims at brooding introspection (with shafts
of light penetrating here and there).  I liked the second movement (a
scherzo, sort of) the best.  Again, the material doesn't stick in the
memory, but at least the movement has rhythmic life.  It reminded me,
here and there, of Bernstein's Age of Anxiety symphony.  The slow movement,
an homage to Mozart, rips off the manner of Ravel's slow movement in the
G-major concerto, without the latter's melodic distinction.  It occurs to
me at this point that Shawn's music is mainly manner - or good manners.
The finale exploits the material of the previous movements.  Since that
material failed to dent consciousness the first time around, it's unlikely
that its recall will.  Ursula Oppens's anemic, monochromatic playing and
pallid, unimaginative way with a phrase don't help matters.

The weaknesses of Shawn's concerto come into immediate focus when you
hear the Lees second.  It's Mark Twain's distinction between the right
word and the almost-right word - between lightning and the lightning-bug.
Lees's concerto premiered in 1968 with Graffman as soloist and Leinsdorf
conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  Thirty-three years later, this
may be its first commercial recording.

Lees has always been a musical dramatist, even in abstract works.  The
concerto form suits him, and he's written several, including concertos for
each of the principal sections of the orchestra - string quartet, brass
choir, wind quintet, and percussion.  Here, he opposes sharply-contrasting
ideas, each distinctive in itself.  The first movement, a lickety-split
toccata, exploits what Lees calls a "trill" idea and what I think of as
more of a skip.  The skip gets extended into rat-a-tat runs, which Lees
contrasts with slower, punchier versions of themselves and the initial
skip.  The skip is never absent for long, even in a lyrical theme, where it
becomes a kind of grace note.  As the work continues, one becomes more and
more aware of links among what one originally thought of as separate ideas.
Eventually, they become different aspects of the same idea.  The movement
runs to probably some version of sonata form, but the listener is more
aware of an idee fixe in constant transformation and running into itself.
Even more important, Lees shows his mastery of symphonic rhetoric.  He
seems to create a movement of constant excitement because he knows just
when to hold back and when to apply the gas again.  It will leave you
breathless.

The second movement opens with a real trill idea and elaborates it yet
another way.  Lees tells an emotional "story" of a struggle against stasis.
So many of the themes emphasize one note and snap out of it only at the
impulse of a trill.  Even the timpani seems to trill.  Like much of Lees's
music, there's not a hummable tune, but the composer presents his ideas so
clearly and so powerfully, that you don't miss the opportunity to whistle
along.  Lees interrupts his slow movement with yet another quick toccata
passage of trills, which leads to a remarkable section where the trill
slows down to its motific atoms:  the rising and falling half-step.  Lees
tells us about that for a bit and then ends the movement with a dialogue
between the piano and timpani recapitulating material from the movement's
opening.

The rondo finale, a sort of Mr.  Toad's Wild Ride, comes up with a theme
filled with half-steps, which, as we have heard, the composer has connected
to the skip idea.  Most of the episodes (excepting a very Stravinskian idea
of an upward-thrusting minor third) seem related to the main theme.  Like
all of Lees's music, the concerto is architecturally tight, even rigorous,
but this all serves the emotional drama.  Most listeners would, I believe,
hardly notice, but I think most would thrill to its power.  Lees music,
above all, connects, not only to itself but directly to the listener.  This
is music for the body, as well as the brain.  If you can keep still, you're
probably dead.

Ian Hobson does a marvelous job.  He takes on the role of concerto-hero
heroically.  He is in your face.  His fingers not only find the right
notes, they rage and brood with them.  Hobson has also made a terrific
recording of some of Lees's solo piano music, including the fourth sonata
(Albany TROY227).

Steve Schwartz