Naxos American Classics and CPO

George Antheil's Bad Boy of Music is one of the most entertaining autobiographies ever written by a musician. In part, that is because Antheil was more than just a composer and a pianist - he wrote a book on endocrine criminology, he wrote a love-advice column for Esquire, and he (with actress Hedy Lamarr!) invented the radio-controlled torpedo. Antheil's book makes it sound all natural for the son of a shoe salesman from Trenton, New Jersey. Oddly enough, Trenton, New Jersey (specifically, the County Ballroom in the War Memorial) is the site where this new recording was made!

Early in Bad Boy of Music, Antheil describes how, upon their first meeting, he presented the first version of his Symphony for Five Instruments to his idol, Igor Stravinsky, in the lobby of travinsky's Parisian hotel. Stravinsky was sufficiently mpressed by the first meeting to invite Antheil to return for lunch the next day, and a friendship ensued. Stravinsky might well have agreed that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, because the Symphony for Five Instruments, which as lean and clever as music can be, sounds much like the older composer's Symphonies of Wind Instruments. The middle movement, with its vaguely middle Eastern atmosphere, is something else, but it still shows the composer's preoccupation with both precision and concision.

The Concert for Chamber Orchestra, written at the end of Antheil's sojourn in Paris, also is strongly Stravinskian. The biggest difference - which is not readily apparent to listeners - is that Stravinsky disliked composing according to formula; he was not a "method" composer. Antheil was much more dependent on short rhythmic or melodic "modules" that could be duplicated, moved around, and recombined like modern Swedish furniture. Antheil's Concert, while not a greatly "important" work, is refreshing because it contains no padding at all, and also because it engages the listener's intellect without appealing to his emotions.

The Serenade for String Orchestra, No. 1 (1948) shows other Russian influences - specifically, those of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. (When similar claims were made about his Fourth Symphony, Antheil, it must be stated, denied them, saying that he had beaten Shostakovich to those "influences" by several years!) Again, it is the middle movement that is most original. Series of foreboding tremolos, against which solo instruments take turns playing, create an unsettled feeling that is quite unlike the unsettled feeling one gets from Prokofiev's and Shostakovich's music!)

The "star" piece on this CD, however, is the Ballet Mecanique. It is this work that established Antheil's "Bad Boy" reputation. Originally, it was scored for a phalanx of player pianos, buzzers, airplane propellers, xylophones, and a host of other percussion instruments. Originally, it was intended to be accompanied by a surrealist film of machinery in action. (About 15 years ago, I was lucky enough to see it performed just this way at the Eastman School of Music.) In time, Antheil realized that his original scoring was impractical, and he revised the work several times. The 1953 scoring is heard here: glockenspiel, two propellers, gong, cymbal, woodblock, triangle, snare drum, tambourine, electric bells, tenor drum, bass drum, two xylophones, and only four (!) pianos. Brittle, nervous, and funny, it sounds like a more sinister version of Stravinsky's Les noces. (The two scores premiered at about the same time.)

The Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1991 by conductor Daniel Spalding. Their performances, while perhaps a little reserved, are admirable in that they "keep a straight face" - a characteristic that would have pleased Antheil, I am sure. The dry sound is ideal - the bass drum of the Ballet Mecanique, for example, is reproduced with a clean, heart-stopping thud.

Admirers of exuberant, late Romantic orchestral scores should direct themselves to this CD without delay. These world premiere recordings make a grand case for a revival of the music of Henry Kimball Hadley (1871-1937).

Hadley, like John Alden Carpenter, is an important figure in American classical music who got lost in the relentless onslaught of modernism. Born in Massachusetts to a musically inclined family, he composed from an early age. He also was an accomplished violinist and conductor. He was the first conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and the first American to guest-conduct in Berlin. A prolific composer, his symphonies (five in all), operas, chamber music, piano works, smaller orchestral works, and so on were well received. By 1933, the Musical Courier called him "probably the most important composer in the contemporary American scene." After he died, he was quickly forgotten, and his music seemed old hat compared to what younger Americans and Europeans were up to at the time.

Naxos serves up a tone poem, a rhapsody, and a symphony here. The earliest work is the The Culprit Fay, composed in 1908. Based on long poem by Joseph Rodman Drake, this highly programmatic rhapsody describes the labors a male fairy must complete to be forgiven for falling in love with a mortal woman. (Shades of both Ondine and Iolanthe!) Hadley vividly sets all of this to fifteen minutes of thistledown-light, witty, and unmistakably pictorial music. Annotators (and series producers) Marina and Victor Ledin rightly compare The Culprit Fay to Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Richard Strauss's tone poems, but I kept thinking of the Russians as well, especially Liadov. My only criticism of this rhapsody is that it moves too quickly; ideally, a work some three times its length would be needed to make the most of Hadley's dramatic and musical materials.

The Ocean, written in 1920-21, is based on an ode by Louis K. Anspacher; extensive portions of it are quoted in the booklet notes. Like some of the best ocean music (Debussy, Britten, etc.), Hadley depicts the ocean in its many states and moods, from stormy and violent (the tone poem's opening) to infinite and rapturous calmness. The supernatural makes an appearance here as well, in the guise of sea sprites. As in the rhapsody, Hadley's music makes its subject appear with utter clarity in the mind's eye. Even after the work is over, its gorgeous orchestration and "splashy" moods remain vivid.

In his Fourth Symphony (1911), Hadley names each movement after a point of the compass. After a solemn introduction, "North," like the opening of The Ocean, is violent - we seem to be hurled into the center of a frightening blizzard. In quieter moments, Hadley seems to be suggesting that the snow and cold weather are not without their beauties and consolations. "East" apparently refers to the Far East. Its outer sections are agreeably melancholy (beautiful solo writing here), and a dance section in the middle section provides contrast. Ragtime rhythms and a naïvely unbuttoned mood indicate that the "South" is American. "West" opens with a brio that would have been appreciated by Elgar and Richard Strauss. The twin spirits of pioneering and exploration couldn't bring this symphony to a more attractive close.

Williams and the Kiev-based orchestra outdo themselves on this CD with first-class playing and committed interpretations; I wouldn't expect to hear better anywhere. Similarly, although Naxos's list price is $6.99, the engineering is top of the line. The annotations are an excellent introduction to Henry Hadley and his music. The Ledins's "American Classics" series, to which this is another admirable addition, is a national treasure.

Barber's Cello Concerto, written shortly after he was discharged from the United States Air Force in 1945, has "established itself only at the margins of the repertoire," in the words of booklet note author Richard Whitehouse. (Virgil Thomson, the dean of American music critics, thought it compared well to the work of Brahms.) Nevertheless, Yo-Yo Ma made an excellent recording of the concerto with David Zinman for CBS/Sony in 1988, and Steven Isserlis recorded it with Leonard Slatkin for RCA Victor in 1994, so new recordings seem to come at six-year intervals. Warner and Alsop are the slowest of the three by several minutes, particularly in the final movement. Their interpretation is more lyrical and darker than Ma/Zinman's and Isserlis/Slatkin's.

It is more common to record just "Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance" from the ballet score that Barber wrote for Martha Graham. That 12-minute condensation effectively concentrates the score's tensions into a small, bitter, and intense package. The complete suite, as recorded here, appears less often. One notable recording was done by Howard Hanson and the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra in 1959 (Mercury Living Presence 432 016-2). Again, Alsop is more expansive throughout most of the score, less willing to "bite" than just about any other conductor I've heard record this work, or portions of it. It was supposedly Graham's and Barber's intention that the ballet represent not just Medea and Jason, but the universality of their passions. Alsop's thoughtful reading - one that doesn't lack passion, however - might do just that.

As on the earlier disc, the Scottish orchestra plays splendidly, and the engineering, which features 24-bit technology, surpasses that found on older discs. A keeper.

Santa Claus, Christmas Symphony, was premiered in 1853 by "the eminent musico" (in the words of William S. Gilbert) Louis Antoine Jullien, who was the prototype of today's celebrity conductors. Not a symphony at all, but a 26-minute fantasy, Fry's work depicts the rejoicing of angels, a Christmas Eve party en famille, the gloomy death of a snowbound traveler, a visit from Santa himself, and more. Apparently, the first audience laughed, although it is not clear whether they did so from delight or derision. Fry, a vehement advocate of American music for American audiences, and a music critic to boot, reacted defensively to attacks from fellow critics. He went so far as to refer to the newly founded New York Philharmonic Society as "an incubus on Art" for not having commissioned or performed a single American work during its first 11 years.

It was clever of Fry to write a film score decades before the invention of the motion picture. There's not a tinkle, whoosh, or rattle that isn't illustrative. It's silly, simplistic, and, to be honest, a great deal of fun to hear.

The aforementioned Niagara Symphony was written a year later. Fry brings the cataract to noisy life with a phalanx of eleven timpani and with string scales and tremolos.

In 1864, Fry succumbed to tuberculosis, but not before completing his Overture to Macbeth. Here, in spite of his passionate support of American music, Fry seems to be casting glances across the Atlantic Ocean at Sir Arthur Sullivan. His Overture is a ten-minute précis of Shakespeare's drama, and, its roiling opening for strings notwithstanding, it is neither very violent nor very eerie. Of the four works on this disc, its form is the most sophisticated.

Fry's criticism, particularly his flag-waving, probably has had a greater impact on American music than his music itself. No one can seriously claim that great treasures have been unearthed on this CD. At the same time, fun this innocent and naïve is not easy to come by. Santa Claus, Christmas Symphony might make you laugh, just as audiences laughed almost 150 years ago. In these cynical times, however, we are better equipped to appreciate kitsch than they were.

Fry's music is replete with opportunities for first-chair musicians, even down to the double-bassist, to show their wares, and the Scottish musicians respond without condescension. Overall, the orchestra plays with spirit and affection, and the engineering is very good. This is one of the more unusual entries in Naxos's American Classics series, but it is a worthwhile one nevertheless.

The two suites recorded here were quite popular at one time. They both were written in the early 1890s, shortly after MacDowell returned from his studies in Germany. The first suite, when it is isn't illustrating or describing, it is at least directing visual impressions at the listener. (MacDowell seemed least happy with absolute music.) The five sections are "In a Haunted Forest" (nothing here would have frightened Mendelssohn), "Summer Idyll," "In October," "The Shepherdess Song," and "Forest Spirits." The acorn hasn't fallen far from the tree; MacDowell's idiom and talent are much like his teacher Raff's. This is Romanticism's full flowering, minus the Sturm und Drang, and minus the ingenuity of an Edvard Grieg, for example. MacDowell was an excellent composer of picture postcards, however, and there's nothing wrong with that.

MacDowell took a swipe at Dvorák, writing, "Masquerading in the so-called nationalism of Negro clothes cut in Bohemia will not help us."

The disc is rounded out with the 13-minute Hamlet & Ophelia. These two early tone poems were later folded together (although not entirely convincingly) by the composer. Unlike Tchaikovsky's fantasy-overture on this subject, MacDowell's is all atmosphere and character study; there is no swordplay, no ghostly goings-on. There are Wagnerian echoes, including an allusion to the "Longing" theme from Tristan und Isolde, yet the scale is intimate and largely unpretentious.

How do a Japanese conductor and an Irish orchestra cope with this American music? The answer is: quite well. The playing is secure and the interpretations are level-headed rather than especially persuasive. At any rate, this recording eclipses the ones that were current in the 1950s, so don't hesitate if you are curious about MacDowell.

I heard Alsop conduct the Florida Philharmonic several years ago. It was an all-Tchaikovsky program -- very conservative -- but it turned out to be the best concert in what was an otherwise lackluster season. A student of Bernstein and Ozawa, she seems to bring passion to whatever she conducts. Nevertheless, she doesn't lose control of the music, nor does she impose herself on it in search of effects. There are many good recordings of this music conducted by Andrew Schenck, Thomas Schippers, and others, but it is Alsop's that unites the elusive elements that make a good recording great. Part of the credit certainly must go to the orchestra, which plays its collective hearts out, and to the 20-bit digital sound, which gives this disc audiophile credentials too. Not bad for a super-budget CD.

The music is reasonably familiar. Still, a word or two in its favor might sway potential buyers who are afraid of "modern music." Barber was essentially a Romantic composer, although he wrote for his times and not in spite of them. He was conservative but not reactionary.

The Essay for Orchestra, the first of what turned out to be a series of three, begins with a searing lament for divided strings, builds to a shattering climax, and ends with an poignant gesture of uncertainty; this is grand drama in music. The First Symphony, a concise work in one movement, nevertheless mirrors traditional symphonic form with a purposeful opening section, a scherzo, an elegiac section, and a powerful finale. The third section features another oboe melody, this one almost painfully expressive.

The Second Symphony is a work that Barber destroyed out of dissatisfaction in 1967. Fortunately (although Barber might have disagreed), he was unable to destroy it entirely, and conductor Andrew Schenck resurrected it from a surviving copy after the composer's death. In part, the work reflects the composer's wartime experiences in the Unites States Air Force, and specifically the fear and beauty of flying an airplane at night. Barber used some of his most advanced language in this symphony, which probably explains why it is less popular. Nevertheless, the sweeping drama is characteristic of the composer, and that drama alone should make the symphony worth exploring, even for traditional-minded listeners.

As far as I am concerned, this is one of the year 2000's must-buy discs.

This Naxos disc, a recent release in their "American Classics" series, contains three of his most personable scores. They were written over a period of almost 40 years, and yet there's little to choose between them in terms of their intent, which seems to be the celebration of American music in general, as seen through Gould's prismatic lens. Tunes are not a problem here, because Gould has built these works almost completely around other people's melodies.

The Foster Gallery, written in 1939 and first performed by dedicatee Fritz Reiner, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, is based on songs and dances, some familiar, others more obscure, by American composer Stephen Foster. Gould structures his 35-minute work in the style of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition: Camptown Races takes the role of Mussorgsky's "Promenade," recurring several times in the work in different guises. Foster Gallery is in 13 sections. Gould's fantasias, if you will, on Foster's themes vary from the rather literal to the more fanciful, and the work's emotional tone, while predominantly positive, recognizes the sentimentality, the elegance, and the old-fashioned fun of Foster's original ideas. A highlight for me is the setting of Old Black Joe and My Old Kentucky Home, which is searingly emotional.

Three American bicentennial commissions went to Gould in 1976, including American Ballads, first performed by the Queens Symphony Orchestra with the composer conducting. Gould does much the same thing here as he did in Foster Gallery, except the treatments are a little freer and more expansive. The melodies used here are deeply embedded in the American consciousness, including America the Beautiful (here personified as "Amber Waves") and even the National Anthem, which opens the six-movement work with a "Star-Spangled Overture."

The easy enjoyment of Gould's work obscures his craftsmanship, which is considerable. Writing a good tune is not as difficult as doing something good with it. Putting down Gould (and this disc in particular) for the relative absence of original material is no fairer than accusing Rachmaninov of pilfering from Paganini or Beethoven of robbing from Diabelli.

As has been the case with previous discs in this series, Kuchar and his Ukrainian orchestra are surprisingly idiomatic, and they play Gould's music with refined techniques and emotional gusto. Who, in the past generation, would have dreamed that Ukrainians would become accomplished interpreters of a piece called American Salute? The engineering on this disc is first-class.

For a time, Creston's music was almost forgotten, but the last two decades have been a time of rediscovery. Although these are not premiere recordings, this disc of the first three of his six symphonies is a major event, and another feather in the cap of Naxos's "American Classics" series.

Critic and composer Lazare Saminsky suggested that Creston's style had its basis in genetics: "The inbred Italian taste for descriptive and operatic power and for massed colour is, of course, greatly involved and not always easily traced in Creston's mode de penser. But there is a harsh kind of dramatic coloring in his music, that flowing from Puccini rather than Bellini." Actually, the composer who comes to my mind most frequently when I hear these symphonies is another Italian: Ottorino Respighi, who certainly was a master of what might be called "harsh dramatic coloring." Creston believed that he simply strove "to incorporate all that is good from earliest times to the present day. [. . .] I make no special effort to be American: I conscientiously work to be my true self, which is Italian by parentage, American by birth and cosmopolitan by choice."

The First Symphony, composed in 1940, and performed first by Fritz Mahler and then by Eugene Ormandy and Leopold Stokowski, is in four movements: "With Majesty," "With Humour," "With Serenity," and "With Gaiety." It might be considered an American "Four Temperaments" Symphony.

Kuchar relishes this music's drama. His Second, for example, is more striking than David Amos's Koch International Classics recording from 1990 (3-7036-2H1). The orchestra occasionally sounds a little hoarse, but this is no way detracted from my enjoyment of this recording. I encourage Naxos to press forward with recording the last three symphonies, and then to turn to the concertos that Creston wrote for trombone, marimba, accordion, and other instruments that seldom are so favored.

Antheil wrote his Fourth Symphony in the midst of anxieties and hopes about World War Two - hence the subtitle. This was the work that got him back on track in the United States, although it is not as inventive as the Ballet Mécanique. Its first performance had to wait until 1944, but it was given by no less than Leopold Stokowski and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. If Shostakovich had not lived, it would have been impossible for Antheil to write this symphony. While it clearly is not the work of the Russian master, it is covered with his fingerprints: angular melodies, galloping rhythms, sardonic commentary from the wind instruments, and emotional ambivalence. The first movement has some striking polytonal sections, and Antheil's frequent shifts in tempo and meter make the music sound like a newsreel of the time. Even though the second movement is marked Allegro, slower tempos dominate its central section. The opening is pure Shostakovich. Later, the music becomes more lyrical and tragic (Antheil writes of "news of Lidice and the horrors in Poland"), but an abrupt recollection of the first movement ushers in the recapitulation. The third movement is fugal, and very similar to the Allegretto in Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. The movement is "a brutal joke, the joke of war." The fourth movement is like the first in its episodic construction, but here the themes are consistently militaristic, and there is a gradual movement toward a triumphant - and shockingly polytonal - conclusion. In his book The American Symphony, Neil Butterworth writes, "The bombastic ending reaches heights of banality barely acceptable, even as a reaction to events in wartime.

The Sixth Symphony was premiered in 1949 by Pierre Monteux and the San Francisco Symphony. Elsewhere, I have seen it subtitled "After Delacroix", a reference to Eugène Delacroix's canvas "Liberty Leading the People". Antheil wrote that the symphony was inspired, at least in part, by this painting, and Naxos helpfully reproduces a section of it on the booklet cover. The symphony is in three movements, each eight to nine minutes long. The first weaves fragments of the song "The Battle Cry of Freedom" into the orchestral fabric; it sounds like a collaboration between Prokofiev and Ives. The second movement is nearly motionless waltz - the booklet describes it as reminiscent of Satie - with a more agitated trio. The finale, which the composer intended as "the triumph of joy and optimism over despair, war, annihilation" has a jerky tune and a frenzied air in the style of Prokofiev. The noisy conclusion makes a virtue of bad taste.

McKonkey's Ferry (1948) is a concert overture; subtitled "Washington at Trenton", it was inspired by the first President's famous crossing of the Delaware. It has much in common with the finales of both symphonies. There's nothing particularly descriptive about it; don't expect water music and imitations of gull cries. In fact, it doesn't even sound particularly American. "Attack of the Cossacks" would be a more apposite title. It's a fun opener to this CD, even if its musical value is small.

Kuchar and the Ukrainian Orchestra did a successful Prokofiev series for Naxos, so choosing them for Antheil made perfect sense! Kuchar shows no restraint, and perhaps the only missing quality is the last degree of "bite". The engineering is very fine and free of gimmickry. This is another wonderful addition to Naxos's "American Classics" series.

Antheil's First Symphony was written in 1922. Leopold Stokowski took an interest in it, but the chance of a premiere with the Philadelphia Orchestra was lost when Antheil left for Europe. The premiere, then, was given by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg. Although the musicians and the audience members were diverted by this strange new symphony, the critics disliked it. I can't explain the symphony's overall subtitle; I detect little about it that is gypsy-like. Also, the second and fourth movements are marked "Ragtime," and I hear little of that either. (The booklet notes mention Stravinsky's Petrouchka instead, and I agree with the suggestion.) The symphony's construction has less to do with formal development than with the building block juxtaposition of contrasting materials. The opening movement is an almost impressionistic nature piece (inspired, at least in part, by New Jersey!), the second movement is a scherzo, the third seems to evoke "old sad tunes with heart-breaking memories" (Antheil's words), and the "Ragtime" finale continues the upbeat mood initiated in the second movement.

Archipelago dates from 1935; it was premiered by the General Motors Symphony Orchestra! It's a five-minute rhumba for orchestra, very "pop" and in the spirit of Gershwin's Cuban Overture. Antheil recycled it into his Second Symphony, where, with minor revisions, it became the third movement. The booklet notes hint that Wolff the RSO Frankfurt may get to that work in the future.

The Naxos disc is played by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine under Theodore Kuchar. Wolff and the Frankfurt orchestra play with more refinement, and, in the finale of the Sixth Symphony, more spirit. However, Kuchar is better with the music's more introverted moments. Oddly, it is Wolff who brings out the symphony's tributes to Shostakovich and Prokofiev more strongly, whereas Kuchar is more Ivesian! There is disagreement over tempos too. Kuchar takes the first movement at 8:55 while Wolff is almost a minute faster at 7:58. In the middle movement, it is Wolff who is much slower: 10:30 to Kuchar's 9:09. Their finales differ by only 36 seconds. I'd get the Kuchar first because it is so inexpensive, but if you like it -- and I think you will -- the Wolff is your next logical purchase. More Antheil please.

Music critic Louis Biancolli wrote in the 1940s, "All in all, it [an Antheil symphony] made for good symphonic fun and even if Antheil isn't exactly the American Shostakovich, I would see no real harm if the Russians suddenly began calling Shostakovich the Russian Antheil." The parallels are striking, from nagging rhythms to a hammering xylophone and alternately melancholy and bumbling woodwind solos. Perhaps Shostakovich and Antheil were trying to say similar things about the war that gave Antheil's symphony its subtitle. However, there are hints of Charles Ives as well. The symphony's first performance was given in 1944 by no less than Leopold Stokowski and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Kuchar's recording makes the work sound more shocking; Wolff's German orchestra is more refined than the Ukrainians, and the American conductor is slightly more expansive than Kuchar.

The Sixth Symphony occupied Antheil between 1947 and 1948. The subtitle probably alludes to the end of World War Two and also to the composer's optimism - not entirely justified by reality -- about his career. Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered the work. It was this symphony that Biancolli was referring to in the passage quoted above, not the Fourth; change the name Shostakovich to Prokofiev and I am in agreement with Biancolli.

Annotator Eckhardt van den Hoogen has a lot of fun with these similarities in his booklet note, slyly wondering whether the Russian composers might have been Antheil's twins. For reference, Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony was completed in 1944. There is no reason to accuse Antheil of intentionally copying Prokofiev or Shostakovich, yet he knew their work. On the other, there are Shostakovich-like passages elsewhere in Antheil's canon that predate his familiarity with the Russian composer.

Decatur at Algiers, written in 1944, is described as a nocturne for orchestra. Before one gets carried away with identifying North African elements in this quiet and colorful work, one should know that its earlier title was "Sicily"! At seven minutes, it is a kind of oasis between the Fourth and Sixth Symphonies on this CD.

Wolff and the RSO Frankfurt are sturdy performers; they might have kept Antheil's "bad boy of music" reputation more in mind as they recorded these works. The engineering is excellent, and, as suggested above, the program notes are everything that program notes should be. Antheil's music is wonderful knockabout fun, and any of these new recordings would be excellent starting points for new listeners.

Thomson's music hasn't exactly been missing from the CD era, but discs come and go, and few have managed to hold their place in the catalog for very long. This new CD, part of Naxos's lauded "American Classics" series, is welcome, not just for the key works that it contains, but for the sympathetic performances by Sedares and the New Zealand orchestra.

The music of Virgil Thomson has been likened to a print by Currier and Ives. If the author of this statement, Paul Rosenfeld, meant that Thomson's works are simple, charming, naive, and even a little gauche, then I agree. Currier and Ives prints are never knowing, however, a quality that I associate with Thomson's work. Hearing Thomson gives me the same feeling that I get when reading Henry James - I ask myself, "Is he pulling my leg"? With Thomson, the answer is almost certainly "perhaps".

What architect would build houses out of matchsticks and paste unless he was trying to make a statement? Thomson's musical materials are little brave tunes - sometimes borrowed - that unpremeditatedly climax their artless lives by staggering into a victory celebration or by blundering into a rural ditch. In this, they are typically American. There's more to them than meets the eye. In this, they are typically American as well.

The Second Symphony (composed in 1930, reorchestrated in 1941) also exploits the fun side of iconoclasm. Wilfred Mellers wrote about Thomson's penchant for "deliberately disrupting musical grammar and the logic of connection", and that's as good a description as any for what goes on in the Second Symphony. Pilgrims and Pioneers (1964), never recorded until now, started out as the soundtrack to a documentary film about immigrants. In Thomson's words, the film is "humane, grandiose, and touching", and so is the "nostagically dissonant" music, which sounds like a perversion of a grade-school songbook.

Finally, the Third Symphony (1972) contains music derived from a string quartet by way of an opera, so it really is not a late work at all. Thomson's disjointed iconoclasm is less in evidence here, and this might be the best place to start for those who have yet to experience Thomson's strangely familiar and familiarly strange music.

Sedares and his orchestra have shown their mettle in American repertoire before, and there are no disappointments here. These performances seem better played and better recorded than their predecessors. Howard Hanson's Eastman - Rochester recording of the Symphony on a Hymn Tune scores points for nostalgia, but I think I will be turning to Sedares the next time that I want to hear this music.

This breakthrough CD, released in Naxos's "American Classics" series, contains several other descriptive works in this pyrotechnical vein. There was more to Confrey than Jazz Age etudes, however. He was a master of the winsome miniature, and a "quick sketch" artist whose likes have seldom been seen.

Furthermore, who knew that a pianist from the former Republic of Georgia would be such a convincing advocate? Andjaparidze, an award-winning child prodigy who successfully moved into adulthood, earning still more prizes in the process, now lives in New York City. She performs throughout the United States and teaches in the New York City area. There's nothing her fingers can't do - her fingerwork is seamless - and her grasp on the style is firm. Andjaparidze and Naxos have a hit on their hands. This deserves to be one of Naxos's best-selling CDs ever. Be the first person on your block to catch Confrey fever.

Bennett was born in Kansas City in 1894. After coming to New York, he landed jobs at two prominent music-publishing houses, and he quickly became known as a top-notch orchestrator and arranger for the musical theater. For example, he orchestrated Richard Rodgers's score for South Pacific, and later, he arranged an expert "symphonic scenario" of the show's music - work that was highly characteristic of him. He certainly is less famous for his original compositions, but there's no reason for the neglect, as Naxos shows us here.

Abraham Lincoln: A Likeness in Symphony Form is in four movements: "His Simplicity and His Sadness", "His Affection and His Faith", "His Humor and His Weakness" and "His Greatness and His Sacrifice". The movements roughly correspond to those of a traditional European symphony, and the titles are highly descriptive, making further commentary about the music almost superfluous.

Sights and Sounds, while more metropolitan in focus, is hardly less innocent. Its seven movements depict "Union Station", "Highbrows", "Lowbrows", "Electric Signs", a "Night Club", a "Skyscraper" (tellingly marked Adagio religioso) and "Speed" - the last is apparently not a virtue to Bennett. These are the musical equivalents of word- or pen-sketches in The New Yorker. They poke gentle fun at the pretentions and perils of city life and city-livers. Bennett's music is airy and entertaining. It requires no excuses.

Stromberg and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra are competent advocates for Bennett's music; they play it with warmth and affection. The engineering also is serviceable. One might hope for a major orchestra's attention to these scores in the near future, but this Naxos disc is more than just a stopgap. It is yet another release in that label's increasingly interesting "American Classics" series.

Walter Piston (1894-1976) was of Italian descent - "Pistone" was his family's original surname - and the Italian gift for melody can be heard in these three scores, as modern as they may initially seem. He was born in Maine, studied at Harvard and in Paris (with Paul Dukas and, like so many other composers, Nadia Boulanger) and returned to Harvard, where he remained on the faculty for almost 35 years. In that time (and for more than ten years after his retirement in 1960), he composed steadily, and he also found time to write several classic texts on music theory. He has been dismissed by some critics as a good academician, and it is true that his music is composed with exquisite care rather than with boundary-advancing imagination. Nevertheless, while some men must be out on the frontier, others need to stay in the settled territory nurturing and protecting hearth and home, and it is not to Piston's discredit that he did unsurprising things very well. Most of his music is tonal, but not in the 19th-century sense, and ambiguity (of key, of mode, of emotional climate) is a characteristic of his music. He said that his music sounded like the "same old Piston" no matter what compositional technique he used, and while there is some truth to that statement, it places him in excellent company.

The two concertos date from 1939 and 1960. Both are concise works, with hardly an inessential note. The first, believe it or not, is modelled after Tchaikovsky's sole work in this genre, although I don't think I would even begin to suspect this unless I had read it in Naxos's annotations. The first movement is full of Piston's typically shifting moods. The first theme is warmly lyrical in spite of its angularity, and the second is more cool. Like Copland, Piston cultivates a friendly, vaguely rural feel, but he is more sparing, more likely to hide his emotions.

The second concerto is darker. Nevertheless, this statement can be taken only so far. The first movement opens fretfully, but its second theme has the quality of an arrogant strut. Again, the middle movement is a set of variations on a theme. The theme has an oddly repressed quality, and the variations seem intent on dirtying it up a little. The finale, however, is almost unequivocally high-spirited. In essence, it's an angular dance with skipping rhythms and rich orchestration, and the lyrical, wide-intervalled second theme can't douse its optimism.

The Fantasia was written in 1970 for performance by violinist Salvatore Accardo. Accardo's affinity for the music of Bach and Paganini caused Piston to write music that had the emotional intensity of the former and the brilliance of the latter. Even so, this is a sad work, in spite of its title. Piston's biographer suggests that its outer sections are "painfully aware and transcendentally serene", and that the interior includes "a musical commentary on an overwhemingly hectic world."

Violinist James Buswell has an apartment in Watertown, Massachusetts, across the street from Piston's grave. One can be sure that Dr. Piston is not rolling around in said grave as a consequence of these excellent performances. (Buswell, who plays a Strad, studied at Juilliard with Ivan Galamian.) Kuchar and his Ukrainian orchestra partner him idiomatically. These are not "good, considering" performances, but excellent at any price. Naxos's engineering is unobtrusive, that is to say, natural.

Listeners comfortable with Mahler, Shostakovich, Pettersson, Vainberg, and Gorecki will feel right at home here. In fact, the symphony's opening moments reminded me of the start of the sixth movement of Das Lied von der Erde, except with a Hebraic flavor instead of an Asian one. This movement, subtitled "Visitations", is the only one that excludes the mezzo-soprano. Over the course of its 20-minute span, Lees builds a series of emotional crescendos. At times, the effect is almost overwhelming, but Lees's material is so varied that the ear is refreshed and always looking for more. It is in this movement that I was reminded most of the tense, almost spasmodic rhetoric of Allen Pettersson, particularly as heard in his Seventh Symphony.

The second movement, "Manifestations", contains settings of two Sachs poems: "Someone Blew the Shofar", and "Footsteps". (Naxos's inlay card is incorrect in assigning the first poem to the first movement.) It opens with a long cello solo, and then a hammering outburst from the orchestra (shades of Bernard Herrmann!) ushers in the first poem. Wheeler sings it balefully; hers is one of those voices that can be genuinely frightening, even as it remains tonally beautiful - I would hate to hear her Herodias or her Lady Macbeth!

The final movement, "Transcendence", opens with the childlike sound of the celesta, accompanied by horns, flutes, and double basses. Soon the mood is darkened and a Mahlerian conflict ensues. The solo violin comes forward with a grotesque dance. Once the dance subsides, the violin is joined by the mezzo-soprano, who sings "But Who Emptied Your Shoes of sand?" The poem's closing stanza, "O you fingers/That emptied the deathly shoes of sand./Tomorrow you will be dust/in the shoes of those to come" suggests the tone of the symphony's last minutes - a long crescendo on a trudging theme, and a brief elegiac passage for violin to bring the symphony to a close...although the close has a "more to come" feel to it.

Wheeler, as indicated, has exactly the right voice for this materal, and Buswell acquits himself positively in his solos. Kuchar and the orchestra give a first-class performance. They have recorded several titles for Naxos, but none show them off as well as this one. The engineering also is spectacular in its realism and gut-wrenching impact.

This symphony, once heard, cannot easily be forgotten. Lees's work deserves the same attention given to Gorecki's Third Symphony, a work that is superficially dissimilar but very close to Lees's at heart. One walks away from it not just seared by the implied tragedy, but also healed, through the power of music, by a glimmer of hope.

Naxos's "American Classics" series just keeps getting better and better - I was astonished by the quality of this music. (The performances are pretty good too.) My three-word description of these scores is tunes, tunes, tunes. Melodies tumble out of these symphonies in almost wasteful profusion. Willson's discourse occasionally rambles (the first movement of "A Symphony of San Francisco"), but that's really the worst criticism I have, and when someone's voice is this attractive, rambling can be a pretty tolerable fault.

The First Symphony was written to remember the 30th anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake. According to Willson, the very positive first movement depicts "pioneer courage, loyalty, strength of purpose, and freedom". (If large chunks of this movement don't sound like Vaughan Williams, I'll eat my score to Job.) The second is a passacaglia that represents the city's reconstruction from "smouldering ruins and ashes". A scherzo depicts "the almost childish delight of a people who have a continental delight for artistic pursuits" (allusions to Rigoletto's "Caro nome" during the trio!) and the finale, which follows without pause, is a bullish paean to the city's skyline, an "Allegro molto of steel and metropolitanism", to quote the composer again. If that sounds a little tiresome, trust me: it's life-affirming stuff.

The Second Symphony is no less fine. Willson's inspiration was Father Junipero Serra, a Spanish missionary who was active in Mexico and California in the 1700s. The first movement, which bears his name, sounds a bit like the work of Respighi! Christianity and paganism slug it out in 9 minutes of glorious music. A peaceful second movement depicts the mission of San Juan Bautista, particularly its fabled bells, which are now only a memory. The chirping woodwinds of the scherzo evoke the swallows of San Juan Capistrano, and the finale "El Camino Real" is a stirring march in the style of Respighi and Rozsa.

Both symphonies contain music of the highest quality. Willson writes with unfailing taste and charm, and with an endearing sense of showmanship - a typically European combination. Willson's use of recurring themes in each symphony aids in building structure. It would be a shame if the almost riotous colors found in these works prevented them from being taken seriously. That "fault" hasn't hurt The Pines of Rome, however!

William T. Stromberg and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra have recorded several classic film scores for sister label Marco Polo. It was an inspired choice to use them for these symphonies, because they seem quite comfortable with the more popular American idioms. The engineering is superb.

Please don't miss this CD - it's one of the most interesting releases of 1999.

Brittens Music Eastbourne