FLAGELLO: Passion of Martin Luther King. Serenata. Andante Languido. SCHWANTNER: New Morning for the World. . GIANNINI: Concerto Grosso. Prelude and Fugue. M. GOULD: Harvest.
FLAGELLO: Passion of Martin Luther King. SCHWANTNER: New Morning for the World. James DePreist conducting the Portland Symphonic Choir and the Oregon Symphony Orchestra; Raymond Bazemore, bass and narrator. KOCH INTERNATIONAL 3-7293-2H1 [DDD]: 58:54. Produced by Michael Fine
FLAGELLO: Serenata. Andante Languido. GIANNINI: Concerto Grosso. Prelude and Fugue. M. GOULD: Harvest. David Amos conducting the New Russia Orchestra. ALBANY TROY-143 [DDD]; 65:50. Produced by Vadim Ivanov
Here are two exciting new releases that expand the discography of Nicolas Flagello (see overview of Flagello’s life works at the front of this issue), while drawing attention to other wonderful music as well. Released to coincides with the birthday of Martin Luther King in January, the Koch release highlights two extraordinary musical tributes to the Black leader. As Coretta Scott King suggests in the program booklet, the Flagello and Schwantner represent very different approaches to their subject. Schwantner emphasizes King as the inspiring leader who encouraged the black people of this nation to persevere in their struggle to achieve racial justice. Flagello focuses on King as the embodiment of Jesus Christ in our time, martyring himself for the principle of universal love Having been present at the premieres of both works, I can attest. to the overwhelmingly powerful effect each produces in live performance.
Flagello’s Passion of Martin Luther King is constructed along the lines of an oratorio, in which five choral settings of Latin liturgical texts alternate with solo settings of lines taken from King’s speeches. Actually, the choral portions originated in a work entitled Pentaptych, which Flagello had composed in 1953, but which had left him with certain reservations. King’s assassination 15 years later crystallized for him the realization that the eloquent words of the contemporary spiritual leader could provide just. the human f ocus the Pentaptych lacked. He immediately restructured the work, selecting excerpts from King’s speeches and setting them in an expressive arioso that blends seamlessly with the choral portions, in such a way that the vernacular solo element continually reverberates against the timeless spirituality of the Latin choral sections in a deeply moving synergy. As it stood in 1968, the Passion ended with a setting of “I Have a Dream,” followed by a choral , Jubilate Deo, and it is this version, on never-released recording with brother Ezio as soloist, that has circulated through the tape underground. However, in 1973, James DePreist, who was preparing to conduct the first public performance, persuaded Flagello to omit these two sections, for reasons that have never been made clear to me. Flagello acquiesced to this request, composing an ecstatic new finale based on material that appears earlier in the work, and this is the version we now hear. Years later, Flagello conceded that DePreist’s suggestion improved the work’s effectiveness, but he remained fond of the “I Have a Dream”/Jubilate Deo sequence. He had begun to compose another choral work, to be called Psalmus Americanus, which would incorporate this material, but never completed it.
One of the reasons I have presented all this background information is to explain that the music of the Passion, though dated 1968, reflects many characteristics of Flagello’s ultra-romantic pre-1959 style — more deliberate pacing, greater metrical regularity, more consonant harmonic language, and an unambiguous sense of tonality. As always, the orchestration is sumptuous and virile with no stinting on the climaxes, and the choral writing is gorgeous, with especially exquisite part-writing in the Cor Jesu and the Stabat Mater. The solo settings of King’s words are apt — although, admittedly, the refined bel canto approach is a far cry from the robust rhetoric of Black evangelical preaching. In truth, despite the extravagant grandeur of the: music, this is a very personal, almost mystical, interpretation of Martin Luther King, rather than a work of social consciousness. Bass Raymond Bazemore lends poignant expression to his part, but a richer, fuller, more operatic voice could do better justice to it. James DePreist who has conducted the work many times, continues to lend it his tremendous intelligence and musical sensitivity.
Joseph Schwantner was born in 1943 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for an orchestral work called Aftertones of Infinity. As one of the defectors from academic serialism, he and his work received a good deal of attention around that time. Schwantner developed a distinctive approach that combined an exquisite sensitivity to fanciful gestures and delicate, ethereal sonorities — reminiscent of George Crumb — with phantasmagoric verbal imagery, and frequent use of tonal, consonant musical elements, resulting in a colorful and accessible musical surface with some New Age qualities For some reason, his work seems to have lost: the spotlight more recently, although many of: the younger orchestral composers who have emerged during the past decade have: used his techniques.
New Morning for the World was composed in 1982, though, like the Flagello, it also draws upon material used in earlier pieces . It is scored for narrator and orchestra, and its musical content is more straightforward and conventional than in any other of Schwantner’s works known to me. Only its copious use technicolor percussion effects dates it as a work or the final quarter of this century. In the manner of’ Copland’sLincoln Portrait, the orchestra serves as a backdrop, creating a vivid framework of moods and emotions against which the: extensive excerpts from King’s speeches are highlighted. Although the orchestra is frequently in the foreground, the text, with its own very musical sense of oratory, is the central point of focus, and retains a much stronger sense of its own identity than in the Flagello. The brilliantly-scored music combines elements of an urgent, exhortatory nature with hushed, fervent., hymn-like passages, which ultimately merge in an ecstatic climax whose effect is hard to resist.
Schwantner’s work was initially recorded shortly after its premiere, with baseball star Willie Stargell as narrator. He handled his role with eloquence and dignity and I have never been able to understand why that .recording has riot: been reissued on CD. In my review (Fanfare 7:2, pp. 307-8), I expressed a sense of ambivalence about the work, describing my reaction as ” somewhat :like weeping at a sentimental melodrama, while. being fully conscious of the devices employed to induce such a visceral response.” There is a tremendous reliance sure-fire musical devices, without the den sity of structure, or the sense of multiple dimensions that the Flagello offers. On the other hand, having revisited the work periodically during the twelve years since its premiere, I can testify that it retains its power. It is an enormously effective work, as satisfying in its way as Copland’s enduring memorial to Lincoln. As narrator, Raymond Bazemore offers a touching reading of King’s profound words.
Rather than producing the sense of redundancy that I feared, bringing together the two works and their differing perspectives enables them to complement each other beautifully, as Mrs. King states in her introductory notes, making this a recording of historical, as well as musical, significance.
Though less weighted with extramusical interest, the Albany disc is an equally rewarding now release and features four premiere recordings.
Both the Flagello and Giannini works are flavored by Baroque stylistic features, though in the piece by Flagello, these aspects area minimal. Serenata, composed in 1968 for chamber orchestra, is an entertaining diversion — virtually the only one of his mature works that: is devoid of emotional. stress. Its four-movement design is modeled loosely on the Baroque suite, but its musical content. is thoroughly romantic, arid generally warm and cheerful in tone.
Flagello’s 1959 Concerto for String 0rchestra actually displays explicit use of Baroque features in its outer movements, but not in the “Andante Languido” that forms the central slow movement, offered on this recording. Listeners new to Flagello’s music may think of the elegiac poignancy of Barber’s Adagio combined with the somber severity of Honegger’s Second Symphony and the: pathos of theAdagio lamentoso from Tchaikovsky’s Sixth. But those familiar with his work know that. this heartbreaking lament is echt Flagello in its purest form — one of his core creations (as well one of his own personal favorites). The entire Concerto would be most welcome on recording, but: the “Andante Languido” is certainly effective.– and affecting — on its own.
Neo-romantic adaptations of Baroque forms and concepts was a key preoccupation of Vittorio Giannini (Flagello’s teacher and mentor) — especially during the 1940s and 50s. The Concerto Grosso of 1946 and Prelude and Fugue of 1955 — both for string orchestra — are excellent examples of his approach, and listeners who enjoy Bloch’sConcerto Grosso No. 1, Creston’s Partita and the Albinoni-Giazotto Adagio will certainly respond to these ingratiating pieces. The outer movements of the Concerto Grosso are bustling and vigorous, at times suggesting the composer’s proclivity foropera. buffa, and with lots of 18th-century-style counterpoint. The slow movement is an impassioned expression of grief that combines Italianate lyricism with a Bach-like sense of gravity.
The Prelude and Fugue is essentially cut: from the same cloth, but. I like it even more. It is somewhat more tightly structured and equally heartfelt, with a terrifically exhilarating arid beautifully elaborated fugue in quintuple meter . Giannini was an enormously appealing composer whose la rge and varied output remains unexplored. With this release, and the disc of 24 songs ( ACA C M-2001 1-11 , see Fanfare 16:1 , pp. 242-44), perhaps the exploration is beginning. With most of Howard Hanson’s output available on recording, the equally accessible. and far better crafted) music of Giannini is the next logical step for the growing number of listeners drawn to this gener ation of American neo-romantics.
As a bonus, the Albany disc includes the first recording of Morton Gould’s Harvest. This 14-minute tone poem scored for strings with harp and vibraphone is more ambitious arid serious in tone than most of Gould’s better-known pieces, with .less emphasis on overtly vernacular elements. It was composed in 1945, during the period when Gould was at:. the height of his fame — when his weekly light-music series on radio made: him a household name, and Dmitri Mitropoulos was introduc ing his Third Symphony with the New York Philharmonic. If Flagello and Giannini were out of touch with their times, Morton Gould has always been a man of his time. Yet: from today’s perspective, as the musical personalities of Flagello and Giannini seem to transcend their time and place. Gould’s work reveals so little other than its time anal place reflected through counterfeits of then-fashionable Harris and Copland works. In a certain sense, this makes Harvest one of Gould’s most revealing pieces.
David Amos conducted these recordings in Moscow with a group called the New Russia Orchestra. They play with considerable accuracy and sensitivity, producing some. of the most: incis ive performances I have heard under Amos’ sympathetic direction. The sound quality of this disc, as well as the Koch disc, is superb.