Amy Beach - Piano Concerto; Symphony ''Gaelic'' (Alan Feinberg; Kenneth Schermerhorn)

Information

Composer: Amy Beach

1. Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor, Op. 45: 1. Allegro moderato
2. Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor, Op. 45: 2. Scherzo. Vivaco (Perpetuum mobile)
3. Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor, Op. 45: 3. Largo
4. Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor, Op. 45: 4. Allegro con scioltezza
5. Symphony in E minor, Op. 32 "Gaelic": 1. Allegro con fuoco
6. Symphony in E minor, Op. 32 "Gaelic": 2. Alla siciliana - Allegro vivace - Andante
7. Symphony in E minor, Op. 32 "Gaelic": 3. Lento con molta espressione
8. Symphony in E minor, Op. 32 "Gaelic": 4. Allegro di molto

Alan Feinberg, piano (1-4)
Nashville Symphony Orchestra
Kenneth Schermerhorn, conductor

Date: 2003
Label: Naxos
http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559139

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Review

One of the most valuable releases yet in Naxos’s American Classics series

Composed in 1898-99, Amy Beach’s ambitious, singularly impressive Piano Concerto is at long last coming in from the cold. An expansively rhetorical Allegro moderato launches the work before a playful perpetuum mobile scherzo and moody Largo (described by its creator as a ‘dark, tragic lament’); the finale (which follows without a break) goes with a delightful swing. In fact, it’s a rewarding achievement all round, full of brilliantly idiomatic solo writing (Beach was a virtuoso pianist herself and performedthe work many times) and lent furtherautobiographical intrigue by its assimilation ofthematic material from three early songs. 

Much as I appreciate the gentle perception of Joanne Polk’s 1999 account with Paul Goodwin and the ECO, Alan Feinberg brings extra charisma to bear without any loss ofdelicacy or poetry, and his collaboration with Kenneth Schermerhorn and the Nashville Symphony undoubtedly generates greater thrust and spontaneity. The recording, too, is more pleasingly spacious, if a little lacking in body (I prefer the meatier piano timbre on the Arabesque disc). 

Following the success of her 1889 Mass in E flat, Beach knew that she needed to produce a large-scale symphony to cement her reputation; it was the Boston première of Dvorák’s New World that finally spurred her into action. Responding to the Czech master’s exhortation that American composers should turn tospirituals, plantation songs and minstrel-show music for inspiration, Beach observed in a letter to the Boston Herald: ‘We of the North should be far more likely to be influenced by theold English, Scotch or Irish songs, inherited with our literature from our ancestors.’ Forher Op 32 Symphony, Beach selected fourIrish melodies of ‘simple, rugged and unpretentious beauty’, moulding any additional themes ‘in the same idiom and spirit’. 

That the Gaelic Symphony (1894-96) won golden opinions from the outset comes as no surprise, given its big heart, irresistible charm and confident progress. Happily, Schermerhorn and his eager Nashville band more than hold their own by the side of Neeme Järvi and the Detroit SO. Theirs is a convincingly paced, tidy performance with real fire in its belly and plenty of character. The sound is truthfully balanced and eminently vivid, if not as opulent as Chandos’s 1991 production. 

So, a thoroughly enjoyable issue, whose claims are strengthened by a lucid booklet-essay from Beach scholar Adrienne Fried Block.

-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/Jun03/amybeachnaxos.htm
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/July03/BEACH_Naxos.htm
http://www.allmusic.com/album/amy-beach-gaelic-symphony-piano-concerto-mw0001421661

http://www.amazon.com/Beach-Gaelic-Symphony-Piano-Concerto/dp/B00008ZZ2Z
http://www.naxos.com/reviews/reviewslist.asp?catalogueid=8.559139&languageid=EN

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Amy Beach (September 5, 1867 – December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Beach

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Alan Feinberg (born in New York City) is an American classical pianist. He is an experienced performer of both classical and contemporary music and is well known for recitals that pair old and new music. Feinberg has premiered over 300 works by such composers as John Adams (composer), Milton Babbitt, John Harbison, Charles Ives, Steve Reich, and Charles Wuorinen, as well as the premiere of Mel Powell's Pulitzer Prize winning Duplicates. He has recorded numerous CDs for London/Decca, New World Records, CRI, Harmonia Mundi, Bridge, New Albion and Naxos, and has received five Grammy nominations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Feinberg

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Kenneth Schermerhorn (November 20, 1929 – April 18, 2005) was an American composer and orchestra conductor, best known for his association with the Nashville Symphony. Schermerhorn studied with Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood and later serve as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Schermerhorn was music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (1963-1965) and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (1968-1983). Schermerhorn was music director of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra from 1983 to his death, and was widely credited with raising the level of excellence of the arts in Nashville.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Schermerhorn

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