Information
- (01) Charles Martin Loeffler - La mort de tintagiles, Op. 6
- (02) Carl Ruggles - Evocations (Orchestral Version)
- (06) Howard Hanson - Before the Dawn, Op. 17
- (07) Henry Cowell - Variations for Orchestra, HC 833
Basque National Orchestra
Robert Trevino, conductor
Date: 2021
Label: Ondine
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Robert Trevino has put together a cleverly varied programme of little-known American orchestral works. Indeed, this is the premiere recording of Howard Hanson’s Before the Dawn (1920), a youthful, curiously compact tone poem full of heaving emotion. A sad, rather lovely passage starting at 3'13" seems to me to be not just at the work’s centre but also its heart, and it’s beautifully played here by the Basque National Orchestra’s woodwinds.
Carl Ruggles also crams quite a lot into his four miniature Evocations (1943) – better known in their original version for solo piano – though individually and as a set they sound satisfyingly complete. He was a famously cantankerous character and his music is both painstakingly written and uncompromising. Trevino emphasises lyricism over cragginess, and if his interpretation is less finely detailed than Tilson Thomas’s with the Rochester Symphony (originally on CBS, 1/81), it still packs a punch.
Charles Martin Loeffler was born near Berlin but emigrated in 1881 to the US, where he became a violinist in the Boston Symphony. Loeffler’s musical response to Maeterlinck’s La mort de Tintagiles is not nearly as macabre as the puppet play itself but is nonetheless exquisitely crafted and often ingeniously colourful. Listen, say, at 14'20" and you might think that he was cribbing from Debussy’s La mer, though actually Loeffler’s tone poem came first, having been premiered in 1898 (though it’s played here in its 1901 revision). Loeffler’s melodies may not always be the most striking or memorable but I find something to entrance my ears in nearly every bar – note, for example, the prominent part for the fragile-sounding viola d’amore (first heard at 8'00"). Trevino’s reading is slightly broader than John Nelson’s with the Indianapolis Symphony (New World, 9/88) but still conveys the composer’s keen sense of dramatic pacing.
Henry Cowell is best remembered as the radical who first employed tone clusters (Bartók asked his permission to use them), but the Variations for Orchestra (1956) comes from his more conservative later years. There are a few tone clusters here (the high-lying cloud of violins at 4'31", say) along with other modernist techniques carried over from his iconoclastic youth, although these exist in the context of a more traditional language. What’s remarkable, I find, is the sense of unity he creates given such diversity. Each of the seven or so sections has a distinct character, for example – the glittering dance of keyboards and percussion starting at 7'48" is worlds apart from the pastoral song of the woodwinds that follows (at 9'56") – yet in the end, all are facets of an indissoluble whole. If there’s a masterpiece among the four works on this disc, I’d argue it’s this. William Strickland’s 1963 CRI recording has held up remarkably well but Trevino’s is equally authoritative, played with greater polish, and the recorded sound is first-rate. Urgently recommended.
-- Andrew Farach-Colton, Gramophone
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