John Adams: Chamber Symphony
BMOP/sound

Samuel Barber: Medea
BMOP/sound

Issued last year, these releases by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and its conductor Gil Rose of material by John Adams, Samuel Barber, and Walter Piston are solid additions to BMOP/sound's ever-expanding discography. Unlike Piston's, Adams's doesn't include any world premiere recordings; it does, however, frame a stellar reading of 1979's Common Tones in Simple Time with the 1992 title work and, born fifteen years later, its Son of Chamber Symphony progeny. As sterling as all three BMOP performances are, it's the rendering of the earliest piece that registers most powerfully. Only thirteen years separate its writing from that of the Chamber Symphony, yet the two are so drastically unlike they could pass for the work of different composers.

Like Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony in E Major, opus 9 of 1906, the Chamber Symphony by John Adams (b. 1947) merges the sonic richness of a full-scale orchestra with the intimacy of the chamber music form. While he was attracted to his elder's work by its fast-moving energy and its virtuosic writing, Adams infused his piece with an even greater playfulness, that dimension having been inspired by the experience of overhearing the hyperactive scores to ‘50s cartoons his young son was watching; certainly a movement title such as “Roadrunner” makes the connection explicit, as does the abrupt ‘jump-cutting' that occurs throughout the faster movements. In contrast to the seriousness of Schoenberg's, there's a wackiness to Adams's that's intimated by the very first sound heard: a cowbell. It's raucous music, devilish even, and as the first movement, “Mongrel Airs,” rolls on, hints of jazz surface in its swing and in its woodwinds and horns. That dimension re-emerges in the less frenetic “Aria with Walking Bass,” the latter detail, of course, a fixture of early jazz. While the slower pace proves as gripping when Adams's orchestration tickles the ear with enticing instrument combinations, “Roadrunner” captivates for its rollicking boisterousness and, one might say, Dionysian wildness.

When he wrote Common Tones in Simple Time, his first orchestral work, Adams was commonly grouped with Reich and Glass as a minimalist. Yet while pulsation and repetition are present in this work and other early ones, he was even then distancing himself from the label by working harmonic modulations and organic evolution into the writing. In the case of Common Tones in Simple Time, the shimmering, single-movement colossus advances patiently, the composer himself likening its effect to the experience of viewing land surfaces from the window of a plane and describing it as “a pastoral with pulse.” Stretching across twenty-one minutes, the majestic, oft-serene realization by BMOP and Rose reveals a remarkable command of pacing and texture. If ever an argument needed to be made for the orchestra, its rendering of this work would be all that's needed.

Like its parent, Son of Chamber Symphony is in three parts, with animated movements bookending a gentler one and the tone of the outer parts flamboyant (unlike the earlier one, however, the later work eschews descriptive movement titles). Jumpstarted by a pumping bassoon figure, clave, and violin accents, the work immediately resurrects the vibrant tone of its precursor in its jagged thrust, as does the second movement when it's prodded by a pulse not unlike the one in “Aria with Walking Bass”—though the tone of the later movement is rather more rhapsodic and bewitching. Reinstating the jittery vibe is the dance-like closer, which, surprisingly, includes references to early Adams, including the “News” section from Nixon in China. If Common Tones in Simple Time satisfies the minimalist criteria, the maximalist others most assuredly do not. What all three share, however, is Adams's signature command of orchestration, his gift for maximizing the timbral colour of an ensemble, and rhythmic propulsion.

Medea, the ballet score Samuel Barber (1910-81) wrote to accompany the Martha Graham Dance Company's stage production in 1946 and presented here in its complete original form, gets top billing on the Barber release. Yet of the three works featured, it's his esteemed Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947) that makes the greatest impact, especially when the luminous performance by the orchestra is augmented by a magnificent vocal from soprano Kristen Watson. Rounding out the three is another vocal piece, this one the ten-minute ‘chamber opera' A Hand of Bridge (1959).

Barber once stated, “I suppose if I'm writing music for words, then I immerse myself in those words, and I let the music flow out of them.” No better example might be found than the fifteen-minute tone painting Knoxville: Summer of 1915, which Barber created using James Agee's impressionistic reverie of a southern town's summer evening as its text. Reminiscent in its elegiac character and nostalgic ache to Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Barber's poetic evocation mesmerizes for its lyrical beauty and poignancy. It was American singer Eleanor Steber who commissioned Barber to write a work for voice and orchestra, and he replied with an enduring piece that captures the folkloric experience of growing up in America. Though it's in one movement, three discernible tempo changes occur, as do segues between major and minor and even a hint of the blues. Agee's text inspired an abundance of gestures from the composer, resulting in an uncanny symbiosis between words and music. At the beginning, the pastoral peacefulness of the summer evening, for example, is intimated by a lilting 3/4 rhythm that suggests the to-and-fro of a front porch rocking chair. A plenitude of detail paints a vivid scene of small-town life with occasional moments of boisterous activity accenting contemplative reflections. Memories of town elders are recalled with affection before a gorgeous segue occurs (“On the rough wet grass…”) that sees the ache of the narrator's recollections intensified by the music's swoon. Watson's vocal delivery, touching and emotive but not overwrought, is note-perfect, as is the BMOP's sensitive rendering of the music's textures.

For their collaboration, Graham and Barber settled on Euripides's Medea as the subject matter for the ballet, which focuses on four characters—Choros, Medea, Jason, and the Princess—and culminates in Medea's murder of the Princess. Characterized by Graham as “a dance of possessive and destroying love, a love which feeds upon itself, like the serpent heart, and when it is overthrown, is fulfilled only in revenge,” the ballet was first titled Pain and Wrath are the Singers, then Serpent Heart, and finally, after further revisions, Cave of the Heart for its 1947 presentation. Even when heard in the absence of Graham's choreography, Barber's nine-part score holds up as a stimulating creation whose character was well-captured by his friend, the poet Robert Horan, in stating, “The alternation of parts, like the swing of a pendulum, between relaxed lyrical flow and tense angularity, make wonderful scaffolding for the tragedy.” Certain movements do stand out as particularly Barber-esque, including the lyrical seventh and solemn eighth, with foreboding and tension seeping into the latter as it sets the stage for death.

Scored for four soloists and chamber orchestra, A Hand of Bridge was created in collaboration with Gian Carlo Menotti for the 1959 season of his Festival dei due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. The premise is simple enough: the work centres on two suburban couples—Bill, a lawyer (tenor Matthew DiBattista), and his wife Sally (mezzo-soprano Krista River), and David, a businessman (baritone David Kravitz), and his wife Geraldine (soprano Angela Gooch)—playing a card game and engaging in verbal exchanges and private thoughts. Whereas the singers present their lines recitatively during the game, a more melodic quality informs the expressions of their inner monologues. A Hand of Bridge is irreverent, witty, and, best of all, fun, and its syncopated rhythms and rapid vocal shifts a source of much delight. Still, however compelling Medea and A Hand of Bridge are as compositions, they're no match for the greatness of Knoxville: Summer of 1915, especially when the performance is as brilliant as the one on this release.

Whereas the respective works on the Barber and Glass sets reflect dramatic contrasts in style, the four on the Walter Piston (1894-1976) recording are marked by cohesiveness and uniformity, despite key differences and despite spanning thirty-four years. Its formal title is ceded to 1933's Concerto for Orchestra, recorded here for the first time, but the others are also noteworthy. All are distinguished by heightened craft, balance, clarity, and proportion, plus a refined neo-classical character, and each impresses as a smartly resolved modernist work created with precision and deliberation.

Piston's an American composer in the fullest sense, yet non-American composers such as Fauré, Stravinsky, and Hindemith had a strong influence on his largely instrumental compositions. Born in Rockland, on the coast of Maine, Piston moved to Massachusetts at a young age and where he lived for most of his life. After graduating from Harvard in 1924 at the age of thirty, he lived in Paris for two years and studied with Nadia Boulanger and Paul Dukas before returning stateside and joining Harvard to teach music theory and composition, which he did until his 1960 retirement. Benefiting from such experiences, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner developed an enhanced appreciation for French neo-classicism, Bach, and jazz, aspects of which subtly found their way into his compositions.

The Hill of Variations on a Theme by Edward Burlingame Hill (1963) was Piston's teacher and colleague at Harvard, while the theme was one composed for Harvard student and amateur flutist Herbert Kibrick. Like the Concerto for Orchestra, this ten-minute work appears for the first time on record in this BMOP performance. Darker moments emerge reminiscent of early Schoenberg, and the tension that permeates the material as it advances through multiple keys reinforces a vivid sense of traditional harmony straining to branch out into dissonance. Flute acts as a unifying element, however, when it inhabits the forefront in multiple passages. In contrast to the orchestral arrangement of the opening piece, 1946's Divertimento for Nine Instruments presents an example of Piston's chamber writing, in this case a setting scored for woodwind quartet and string quintet. Neo-classicism is more present in this three-movement work than in the opener, with Stravinsky's influence felt in the spirited animation of the “Allegro” and the mischievousness of the brisk “Vivo”; in between, the pace slows for the solemnity of the “Tranquillo.”

Composed and premiered in 1967, the Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra features a bravura turn by Michael Noseworthy in the soloist's chair. Though it's a single-movement piece, discernible sections are present that are bridged by solo cadenzas. Jazz surfaces in the fast, rhythmically charged episodes, but contrast arrives in the form of a slow, strings-drenched lento. The Concerto for Orchestra (1933) naturally invites comparison to the same-titled ones by Hindemith (1925) and Bartók (1943), but Piston's distances itself from theirs in distinct ways. Unlike Bartók's five-movement and Hindemith's four-movement designs, Piston's is in three parts. His and Hindemith's are also compact at fifteen and twelve minutes, respectively, whereas Bartók's is in the thirty-five to thirty-eight range. Consistent with the title, Piston's is a showcase for the ensemble's virtuosity, yet it also includes passages featuring individual instruments and instrumental sections. A dynamic march pulse drives the vibrant “Allegro moderato ma energico,” after which the pace accelerates for a generally breathless scherzo. Relief comes with the concluding “Adagio—Allegro moderato,” which begins as a passacaglia that swells from a low-register solo tuba into a robust brass arrangement. The focus shifts to woodwinds and then strings, such moves suggesting Piston's conscious desire to exploit orchestral colour in full, until the activity level intensifies to end the movement on a triumphant note.

January 2022