Zwilich, Three Decades of Music for Piano and Orchestra

I was exiting a concert by a prominent orchestra a few years ago when I overheard an elderly woman remark to her companion, "Shostakovich is all well and good, but he's no Beethoven." I was momentarily taken aback. These things are going on in that listener's mind despite the years that separate the two composers, and now despite the years that separate us from either of their worlds. How can you come to appreciate any modern composer if you have to filter their music through one of the masters of a much different era and style? One answer might be found in the music of Zwilich.

Right, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. She belongs to that rather rare category of modern composers who have gained acceptance and even popularity for a pretty large group of otherwise possibly indisposed concert music listeners. And yet there is nothing condescendingly ingratiating to be found in her music. What there is about her music, though, can be seen pretty clearly in her Millennium Fantasy (Naxos 8.559656), which features three substantial works for piano and orchestra, one each from the last three preceding decades.

The music, as in the cases of Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein (and of course George Gershwin), has a genuinely "American" feel to it. And it's a shade on the populist side of things. The "Millennium Fantasy," for example, is based on a folk song Ellen's grandmother sang to her, "Wayfaring Stranger" if I am not mistaken. Zwilich interweaves the folk theme in the dialog between piano and orchestra like a recurring memory intrudes at various points when, say, one is drifting off to sleep. It testifies to her fertile inventiveness and total mastery of the compositional mode that the folk melody fits right in with other more modern sounding motifs.

Another example is the "Peanuts Gallery for Piano and Orchestra" from 1996. Each movement portrays a particular character from the popular comic series, in a lighthearted but musically enriched way.

Even her most "serious" work on the program, "Images for Two Pianos and Orchestra" (1986), devotes each movement to a particular painting, in each case by a woman artist. So there is a literal program to reassure a sometimes wary audience that all these modern sounds "mean" something.

Regardless of all that, it is Zwilich's music that wins the day. There is a fluency and ease of expression to her music that encourages acceptance of the modern idiom in which she works. So as I listen to this very enjoyable Naxos release, I am thinking that this music should find an even larger audience. The Naxos budget price, the fine performances by the Florida State University Orchestra and the three piano soloists, the substantial yet accessible Zwilich scores, all this should be well-received out there in musicland. And for me, someone who can ride with pleasure to the nether worlds of the most modern utterances that could be conceived, I do not find her populistic tendencies in the least off-putting. That is in part because she is such a gifted composer. The music wins out, no matter where you stand on modernism. It's too good to be subjected to factionalism. And this recording is a delight to hear. Repeatedly without a doubt.

William Schuman's Eighth in a Beautiful New Recording

William Schuman was one of those larger-than-life persons when I was first embarking on a musical career. As president of Julliard, then Lincoln Center, he had a public presence rare for a composer of modern music in the 20th Century. One just knew about him if one was in and around New York at the time, and so one naturally found oneself wanting to hear his music.

Schuman is a composer for whom a gestation period is necessary, I believe. This is perhaps especially true for his Eighth Symphony, first performed in 1962 by Leonard Bernstein for the opening days of Lincoln Center. The music is dense, somber, intensely brooding, rather complex, and (like many of Harris's works), constructed on the principal of an unending melodic sprawl, made intriguing in the way the orchestration colors the phrasing with interesting aural combinations. It is a remarkable work, a work of pure invention, and perhaps its complexity has made rough going for the average audience.

Schuman's Eighth is not a work to be absorbed fully in one sitting. The positive side of that factor is that increased exposure to the work leads to almost infinite pleasures. The more one listens, the more Schuman's musical world reveals itself to the ears and the musical mind's eye.

There have been a number of recordings of the work. Bernstein's NY Philharmonic version more or less set the standard. However, the new recording by Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony (Naxos) certainly comes close to rivaling that original reading. Schwarz's interpretation is a little more linear; he connects the musical-phrase-dots in a way that brings out the musical logic of the piece. The sonorous qualities of the large orchestra needed to properly perform this work is captured in a full sound stage and the balance seems quite right. Schwarz's reading is expressive; it heightens the seriously somber quality of the work. In short, it is a lovely reading.

As a bonus, the disk includes the 1947 ballet Night Journey in its 1981 revision; and the marvelous Schuman orchestration of Charles Ives's delightful Variations On "America".

This is an indispensable installment of Naxos's complete Schuman symphony cycle. It is great listening!

Charles Wuorinen On Alligators

When I was in the peak of my aspiring composer days, schlepping around Manhattan soaking up what I could of the contemporary music world there, I attended a new music concert of works by the new modernists. George Perle, Meyer Kupferman, I believe, and a number of other composers were represented, all quite interesting, but what got my attention was Charles Wuorinen's chamber work "On Alligators." This was around 1972. What impressed me was its dynamic forward movement. It was post-bleep-and-bloop Webernism (which I still love BTW whether it is fashionable to do so anymore or not). It almost had the drive of rock music, yet it had lots of chamber color and complexity.

Charles Wuorinen by reputation was probably at that point New York's most well regarded new composer. He taught at Columbia, he had just won a Pulitzer Prize, he was big. "On Alligators" confirmed for me that his reputation was deserved.

Years went by, I set aside my compositional ambitions for a time, but I still remembered that piece and was vexed why it did not seem to be recorded.

I just discovered a fine Tzadik release devoted to Wuorinen's works, called appropriately enough On Alligators. It's been out for a little while but I am just catching up with it. It is an excellent anthology of various Wuorinen compositions. "On Alligators" is every bit as dynamic as I remembered it and the performance is superior. Then there's a densely written Fourth String Quartet, which is well worth the hearing. The longish organ piece "Natural Fantasy" has a booming kind of avant charm. And the Third Piano Concerto, from 1983, is another of his masterpieces.

Alligators and the Piano Concerto make this volume indispensable for those interested in Wuorinen and post-serialist, post-post-serialist modernity. He still strikes me as one of the best of the second half of the twentieth century. What he is doing right now I don't know but I am sure it is worth hearing. Meanwhile there's this one. I am so glad I finally can savor an excellent recorded performance of "On Alligators." Thanks to Tzadik for putting it out.

Paul Fetler, American Composer

Paul Fetler (b. 1920) only now enjoys a CD exclusively devoted to his music (Naxos 8.559606). Arie Lipsky conducts the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra in a program of three works that seemingly give you a good idea of this relatively unknown American composer. His composition teachers are one place to start to give you an idea of his musical style; they are David Van Vactor, Quincy Porter and Paul Hindemith. While Fetler is in no way a clone of these masters, he does share with them a kind of modernist, tonal lyricism. The "Three Poems by Walt Whitman (1976)," "Capriccio (1985)," and "Violin Concerto No. 2 (1980)" share a skillful use of orchestral color, atmospheric evocativeness and the long-phrased quality of late romantic tone poem exposition.

Violinist Aaron Berofsky does a fine job with the solo role in the Poems and the Concerto, and a vivid sound stage on this recording brings Felter's music to life. He may not be one of the prime movers of his musical age, but his music has charm. Hindemith he isn't. He is Fetler.