Samuel Barber: Die Natali, Prayers of Kierkegaard op. 30 (Gloria Capone soprano), Ernst Toch: Jephta Rhapsodic Poem (Symphony No. 5), Paul Creston: Corinthians XIII op. 82. The Louisville Orchestra, Jorge Mester (in Barber), Robert Whitney. First Edition Encores Albany TROY021-2 (1989) barcode 034061002123
Die Natali recorded 20.II.75, Prayers of Kierkegaard recorded 24.III.77, Macauley Theatre, Louisville
Toch reissued FECD-0035 (2005):
Neo-Romantics in Louisville
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 6 December 2007
As important as the Louisville First Edition Recordings LPs were for 20th-Century music, releasing, between the early 1950s and the late 1980s loads of music from composers of all stylistic allegiances and nationalities, one of their drawbacks was the lack of coherence of their programs, the apparent motley pairing of composers and compositions with no perceptible stylistic kinship. When Albany picked up the Louisville catalog for CD reissues in the late 1980s (and that went no further then ten releases, followed by ten more made by Louisville’s own label – for details and links, see my Louisville CD-discography, link will open new tab), to a certain extent they pursued the habit. Some of their releases were indeed devoted to single composers, such as AR011 Walter Piston, AR012 Roy Harris, AR013-4 Morton Gould and TROY 047 Ned Rorem. But this one, TROY021-2, paired composers that, on the face of it, might have seemed as divergent in their compositional language as the once-Viennese avant-garde Ernst Toch and the American neo-Romantic Samuel Barber.
Actually, there is a certain stylistic coherence between all these works – other than the fact that three of them have biblical subjects (and Barber’s “Prayers of Kierkegaard” isn’t so far, as it sets some of the philosopher’s most Christian utterances) – in that they are all couched in a neo-Romantic language with very occasional flights into more angular dissonance.
I like Barber’s Symphonies, whose anger and dissonant angularity belie the composer’s reputation of a neo-Romantic. But his Die Natali (an orchestral piece from 1960) and Prayers of Kierkegaard for orchestra, mixed chorus and solo soprano (1954) do bear out that description. The former sounds exactly as what it is – expertly orchestrated and shuffled together Christmas Carols, pastoral in mood and, despite some flights into mock near eastern, sinuous melodies (did music in Bethleem in year 0 AD really sound that way? Or was it year 1 – an old debate, and not one to be tackled here), sweetly sappy, the kind of music they sell to put your newborn to sleep. “Prayers of Kierkegaard” starts like plain-chant and moves on to Elgarian grandeur, with a few dissonant crashes that could be Honegger or Orff or Kodaly’s Psalmus Hungaricus. Track 7, Allegro molto, is the best, with a dramatic vigor that is reminiscent of some pages of Britten’s Sea Interludes or Sinfonia da Requiem, but overall it is Barber at his most tritely Romantic, and I personally don’t find it very interesting for its vintage. It also suffers from going too much for the grand, serious philosophical and religious statement – rarely a good bedfellow with good music making.
Creston’s Corinthians: XIII Opus 82 (1963) is the composer’s musical depiction of the emotions inspired to him by the following passage of Saint-Paul’s Epistle, “though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity (love), I am become as sounding brass or atinkling cymbal”. All the trademarks of neo-Romanticism are present from the first bars on: sweet and mysterious violins in their upper registers underpinned by warm cellos (quite beautiful actually), pensive bassoon, flute and oboe in pastoral mood. Later you get the sentimental, Hollywood violins. It all works up to a sweeping climax around the 6-minute mark, all in this Romantic language that was about 70 years-late when Creston composed the piece (and maybe prevalent still in Hollywood, or rather in Hollywood ten to twenty years earlier). As effective and pleasurable as it may be in its own way, it makes Creston sound like a second-rate epigone.
I expected something else of Ernst Toch, more daring and thorny and advanced in its musical language. What you get in Jephta is a tone poem (and the composer may call it, and the liner notes broach upon the fact that it is, supposedly, a symphony: it isn’t) in a post-Romantic language very close I find to Schoenberg’s in the Gurre-Lieder – with, I’ll grant, moments of startling dissonance and great dramatic impact evocative perhaps of Honegger at his more daring. It is effective in its genre, depictive and often dramatic, but its episodic nature and reliance, at times, on the trite gestures of post-romanticism smack a little to much of Hollywood film music for my taste.
Toch’s piece has been later reissued on an all-Toch collection, First Edition Music FECD-0035. The Barber pieces were recorded respectively in 1975 and 1977 (Die Natali came on LS 745 with the Cello Concerto of Claus Adams, former cellist of the Juilliard Quartet, while Prayers were released on LS 763 with works of Dan Welcher and Hunter Johnson), Creston and Toch’s in 1965 and 1966 (these last dates not given on the otherwise excellent and very descriptive liner notes. Creston came with Roy Harris’s 5th Symphony on Lou 655, Toch with Harry Somers’ “Passacaglia and Fugue” and François Morel’s “Antiphonie” on Lou 661). They all come in good stereo sound.
Those who don’t like 20th-Century music or revel in the works of Rubbra, Bax, Alwyn and the likes (and sometimes I do, too) might find more enjoyment in this than I did.