American Folklore
Yale Symphony Orchestra/William Boughton
rec. 2022-25
Nimbus Alliance NI6462 [76]
This disc is essentially a showcase for the student orchestra of Yale University spread across performances given over a period of three years. The liner includes an orchestra personnel list which reflects the very significant – if not unexpected in an educational institution – turnover in the players during this time. The good news is that the playing standard is consistently high and perhaps only the absence of a real weight of string tone and attack belies the non-professional status of the orchestra.
The disc is given a seemingly arbitrary title of “American Folklore”. Perhaps the character of Billy the Kid belongs to folklore but of the other four works, one is a ballet, one based on an Australian Creation Myth, one a wholly abstract work and the last a memorial to a contemporary tragedy. The album artwork tenuously tries to link the works more. The programme in its own right is an interesting one combining a standard repertoire ‘pops’ work with a work that probably should have that status along with three more contemporary works receiving their premiere orchestral recordings. Although the playing is good, I found recording rather diffuse and overly resonant. For the more atmospheric works this was acceptable but it diminished the impact of the passages in the Ellington and Copland that require snap and clear articulation.
The disc opens with the first four movements of Duke Ellington’s River Suite. This is a genuinely appealing work effectively written in the ‘symphonic jazz’ genre. So appealing that I find it curious that it is not more often played or recorded more often. Conceived as a ballet score for Alvin Ailey and the American Ballet Company even at its premiere quite what was the “complete” score was unclear. According to the liner for the rather good Naxos/JoAnn Falletta/Buffalo PO recording (which includes 5 movements) it was originally conceived as a ballet in 9 scenes. Neeme Jarvi’s too brusque – but brilliantly played – version on Chandos has 7 movements while the rather coarse recording by the Louisville orchestra has 8. Ellington’s own hard to find rough/private reference recording of the original sketches I have not heard. Boughton and his young orchestra present just 4 movements and they make a perfectly good job of it. Boughton’s tempi are well-judged and the orchestra – especially the brass front line – play well. Oddly, page turns between movements are audible which suggests a live performance although no other audience noise is present. Again the strings don’t have glamour this kind of music needs and that both Buffalo and Detroit do. An absolutely complete, modern stylish recording still waits to be made.
Conversely the catalogue groans with excellent performances of one of Aaron Copland’s most popular and accessible scores – another ballet this time for Eugene Loring and Ballet Caravan – Billy the Kid. The performance here is of the standard 8 section suite which runs to around the 20:00 mark although my personal preference is the complete ballet which is around ten minutes longer but just brings a little more variety and dramatic arc to the work. Again Boughton’s performance is perfectly good although the bathroomy acoustic does blunt the sheer impact of the gun battle and quite a lot of inner detail does not register with ideal clarity. I did enjoy the lead trumpet’s playing in the Mexican Dance section where they find a genuinely appropriate and characterful tone and mariachi-esque style. So good, but in such a competitive field not a contender.
Which leaves the three less/un familiar works. Christopher Theofanidis’ Rainbow Serpent is a brief – 5:53 – excerpt from a larger work called Dreamtime Ancestors. Curiously neither the composer’s own liner note nor his website say what the larger work was or why it was written. Wikipedia states that it is a three section orchestral tone poem lasting around 17:00. In isolation this movement is meant to represent – in the composer’s words – “a serpentine melody [which] would leave evaporating rainbows behind it”. I know only a couple of other Theofanidis works which were rather spectacularly recorded on Telarc. Rainbow Body from 2000 not only shares a similar name but also an attractive iridescent sound-world. This is a work that seems to benefit from the blurring effect of the unnamed recording venue and certainly the performance sounds confident and convincing as it builds to a slightly cinematic ending.
The final two works are by composers new to me. First is Bernard Rands’ Symphonic Fantasy. This is dedicated to Boughton and sprang from conversations between the two men. The name of Sibelius and specifically his Symphony No.7 came up with a view to creating a new ‘companion work’ that could be programmed alongside that acknowledged masterpiece. From that sprang this work which mimics the older symphony in general scale – length and orchestration – as well as making use of more traditional compositional devices such as sonata form. Rands has gone further by taking the ‘standard’ Exposition-Development-Recapitulation of sonata form and applying those same three processes to each section in turn – so a 3×3 form. In his contribution to the liner he writes; “Anyone listening (hoping!) for music that sounds like Sibelius is doomed to disappointment!… What I strived to create is a self-contained piece… with its own voice… in a stylistic unity [that] at the same time pays respect… to the Sibelius Seventh Symphony.” According to his website (seemingly not updated in a decade) Rand’s career and the commissions he has received encompass most of the main American Orchestras and includes a seven year composer-in-residence appointment with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Likewise his discography – none of which I have heard – is significant.
Given the available time I must admit I struggled to hear/follow the structure mentioned above. Certainly the performance sounds assured and confident although again I did wonder if a drier (but not dry) acoustic would help clarify the instrumental textures which sound relatively dense as presented here. It does come across as a serious even somber work. The UK premiere with the BBC SO under Hannu Lintu can be found on YouTube by searching for the composer’s name and that of the work. Dipping into that performance it does sound more vibrant than this Yale version.
A general characteristic it certainly does share with the Sibelius is the sense of organic growth across the whole work; sections evolve into the next section without a clear delineation of movement or section. The overall pulse of the work seems steady too – although individual instruments or groups may play figurations or gestures that are “fast” there are no sections that could be termed collectively so. Towards the end of the work – the closing two minutes – scurrying string figures dominate in a manner they have not previously although the final gesture is a sustained chord fading to silence.
If Rands’ work is wholly abstract ‘pure’ music then the closing Of Our New Day Begun by Omar Thomas most certainly is not. This 10:20 single movement work was written in remembrance of nine people who were shot and murdered in a racially motivated attack while attending a church service in Charleston South Carolina. The work travels from anger and outrage, via a powerful sung version of “Lift every voice and sing” to a cathartic redemptive climax before sinking away over a slightly menacing stamping rhythm. This is a deeply felt passionate work and again the Yale orchestra play very well even if the sung section sounds slightly well-mannered in a way that a passionate deep-south congregation most certainly would not.
Whether the whole programme really hangs together except as a sampler of the range and ability of the orchestra and its members across a number of years I am really not too sure. So while this might be a valuable memento for those players – and one they can be justly proud of – I do not feel it commands or demands attention from the wider music collecting public.
Nick Barnard
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Contents
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
River Suite – excerpts (1970)
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Billy the Kid – suite from the ballet (1938)
Christopher Theofanidis (b.1967)
Rainbow Serpent from Dreamtime Ancestors (2015)
Bernard Rands (b.1934)
Symphonic Fantasy (2020)
Omar Thomas (b.1984)
Of Our New Day Begun (2015/2020)
