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Tuesday, September 05, 2006
An American Journey on Naxos

“American Journey”: Robert Russell Bennett, Hexapoda; Lukas Foss, Three American Pieces; Leonard Bernstein, Sonata for Violin and Piano; Aaron Copland, Nocturne; Henry Thacker Burleigh, Southland Sketches; Victor Steinhardt, Tango; Lincoln Mayorga, Bluefields, A West Hollywood Rumba for Arnold; Dave Grusin, Three Latin American Dances

Arnold Steinhardt, violin; Victor Steinhardt, piano; others

Naxos 8.559235


Nothing of any particular interest here, I’m afraid. A collection of forgettable pieces by forgotten composers, juvenilia by remembered ones that is of historical interest only, and works by living composers that prolong the quaintly dance-tinged aura of the rest. These are essentially salon pieces, heavily perfumed morceaux that expect no serious attention and would not repay it; I listened to this disc an hour ago and all I can remember is some unexpectedly sinuous harmonies in Victor Steinhardt’s Tango and the surprisingly late-Romantic earnestness of the young Bernstein’s precocious sonata.

The playing is suave enough. On the other hand, much of the music sounds inescapably like genuinely passionate, spontaneous dance music filtered through the pen of an educated, somewhat supercilious composer and then filtered again through the undoubtedly capable playing of conservatory-trained musicians making a recording in the hall of the Curtis Institute of Music. I only hope that nobody takes the blurb on the back of the case too credulously and comes to believe that this stuff actually constitutes the “delightfully rich and varied landscape of American classical music.” It certainly does not – in fact, there is something distinctly early-twentieth-century-European about these attempts at sensuality through training. So listen, curious browser of the Naxos rack – put down this disc and pick up the same label’s eminently worthy releases of music by Ives, Carter, Babbitt, Gloria Coates, Nancarrow, Feldman, and Cage, and get a sense of how delightfully rich and varied that landscape actually is.
posted by Evan Johnson 10:23 PM


 


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