American Dream
Dana Suesse (1909-1987)
Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1941)
Amy Beach (1867-1944)
Suite for Two Pianos Founded Upon Old Irish Melodies Op.104 (1924)
Victor Babin (1908-1972)
Concerto No.2 for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1956)
Ludmila Berlinskaya & Arthur Ancelle (piano duo)
Orchestre Victor Hugo / Jean-François Verdier (Suesse), Laurent Comte (Babin)
rec. 2024, Besançon, France
Alpha Classics 1171 [65]
Nadine Dana Suesse, born in Kansas City, displayed remarkable artistic talent from an early age. She wrote poetry, sketched, designed doll costumes, painted and crafted plays. By the age of 13, she was already performing her own compositions on the radio. After she has received formal musical training in New York, she shifted her focus to popular music, and quickly found success. At 22, she composed for Bing Crosby the hit song Ho Hum, which sold 400,000 copies. Her Concerto in Three Rhythms, performed at Carnegie Hall, earned her the nickname “the Gershwin Girl”. Despite this acclaim, Suesse eventually left the world of popular music to pursue her passion for classical composition; she studied in Paris under Nadia Boulanger. Yet her classical works struggled to gain recognition, and were rarely performed. Only recently has her concerto for two pianos been published, thanks in part to the dedication of the duo featured here.
Suesse taught herself orchestration, so she attended to that aspect of the work herself. It opens in mysterious fashion, vibraphone and harp underpinned by timpani. When the main theme appears on the piano with prominent passages for flute, one can hear the influence of popular music as the strings briefly soar to a cymbal-capped climax. It does not sound to my ears like a product of Neo-Classical Paris of the late 1940s. Occasionally, the pounding piano chords suggest that this is about to turn into Rachmaninov, although it never quite makes it to the sort of long-breathed extended melody that he produced. In fact, I thought it rather short-winded at times.
The slow movement is rather nice. Suesse has produced a romantic tune that appears on the strings on and off, often accompanying what sounds like a question-answer session between the pianists. Equally often, the tune meanders around whilst the pianists produce what sound like improvised phrases—I almost wrote “doodle”. There is a very attractive but short passage, about 20 seconds, when the flute plays charming roulades which the pianos then briefly imitate. The romantic tune rises to three climaxes, and the last constitutes the highly passionate finale. After several hearings, I decided that the movement is a success that repays repeated playing, but I wish that Suesse had composed a more memorable tune.
The third movement is a two-and-a-half-minute toccata à la Prokofiev. Its main virtue is its brevity. The finale attempts to be barnstorming, and in fairness manages it, but its melodic content lets it down. For a composer who had such success in the popular arena in the 1930s and 1940s, I am a little surprised and saddened that she did not produce a couple of really good tunes. Maybe her time with Boulanger imprinted the idea that a ‘modern’ composer active in the 1940s should be more concerned with neo-classical style than melodic content. Rachmaninov had just died, and a reaction against his own unique compositions had already begun. In fact, it began well before he died, as can be read in the critical reactions to his 4th Concerto, 3rd Symphony and the Symphonic Dances, so perhaps Suesse was aware of the shift.
Victor Babin wrote the other concerto on this interesting disc. He was one half of the piano duo Vronsky & Babin. He and his wife Viktoria Vronskaya, known as Vitya Vronsky, were of Russian birth. They were a very successful team in America from 1937 till Victor’s death in 1972. They made their own arrangements of works by Rachmaninov and Stravinsky, who were their close friends.
The concerto is more inclined to the neo-classical than to Rachmaninovian romanticism. Generally speaking, I did not find it a particularly grateful aural experience. The booklet notes inform the reader that the work is technically immensely difficult not only for the pianists but also for sections of the orchestra, and those are problems with which all concerned cope splendidly. The concerto sounds rather derivative of Prokofiev. There is a short percussive passage at 2:16 into the first movement that sounds like it has been subconsciously lifted from the first movement of the 3rd concerto. Elsewhere, I felt it a pity that Babin was unable to even approach Prokofiev’s ability to generate passages of real melodic distinction.
I do not react well to Stravinsky’s neoclassicism, so do not know his concertos at all. I see that he too composed a two-piano concerto in 1935 and a Capriccio in 1929. Whether Babin’s friendship with Stravinsky influenced this concerto, I am unable to say. The music is certainly varied, at times calm and reflective, sometimes pensive and then tense and violent. It may be that my reaction to it will improve after repeated listening. The excellent recording will certainly not mitigate against my desire to experience it again.
The third work is a piano duet, another form not over-represented in the piano repertoire. This one, though, is by Amy Beach (née Cheney). She composed it at last a decade earlier than the Suesse and two decades before the Babin. Beach’s compositional style was honed in the Romantic music of the late 19th century, when the first of her compositions appeared. I read her biography in Wikipedia, and was suitably astonished and impressed by her achievements, particularly this:
but she collected every book she could find on theory, composition, and orchestration […] she taught herself […] counterpoint, harmony, fugue, even translating Gevaert’s and Berlioz’s French treatises on orchestration, considered “most composers’ bibles,” into English for herself.
It is noticeable that the Suite for Two Pianos contains no neoclassical elements. Rather, it is written in a fairly typical romantic style in which Beach represents the ebb and surge of big bodies of water, something that she declared she had felt when working on the suite. This can be heard at the opening of the first and third movements, where sweeping arpeggios cover the whole length of the keyboard. Beach’s melodies fall gratefully on the ear, and I can do no better than to quote the booklet, with thanks: “dreamy in the first movement, dance-like and humorous in the second, and irresistibly rousing in the fourth. We hear ethereal lines, furious rumblings, a frantic fugato, Gaelic-inspired trills, whirling octaves, and counterpoint that blends several melodies; the musical language is limpid and the balance ideal, provided that Beach’s pedal and articulation marks are rigidly observed, as they demonstrate her intimate and perfect knowledge of the instrument and of two-piano projection.”
The recording excellently captures the two pianos, so the listener can distinguish between them. The sound, even when Beach is going full tilt, is never thickened or clogged. The conductors and their orchestra accompany very well indeed, and there is fine recorded balance between it and the soloists.
The presentation is what is becoming the norm, a cardboard gatefold sleeve, the disc in one side, the booklet in the other. Arthur Ancelle, one of the pianists, wrote the booklet notes. There are biographical details of the composers and artists.
Jim Westhead
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