American Ethos
Carolyn Enger (piano)
rec. 2022-25, New York City
Metier MEX77140 [79]

The music on this disc comes from a larger body of works that pianist Carolyn Enger performs. I feel that she has made some odd choices in her assembling of the programme. The promotional material states, “Released in time for the celebration of the 250th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence, Carolyn Enger poses the question of how to characterise American composition over so many years and throughout times of such sharp division. How can a musical ‘Ethos’ be encompassed in all its various styles, sentiments, and beliefs?” Ms Engers is quoted as saying “I wanted to have a broad feeling of Americana… I wanted voices that have been overlooked over the years then come to light because they influenced voices that we’re very familiar with.”

The works on the disc, rather than representing a variety of voices, all come from a certain style of mid-twentieth century Americana. She assembles a mix of composers of differing sexualities, races and genders all of whom seem unified in a common aesthetic which was challenged and questioned for much of the late twentieth century. All of the works are tuneful and melodic, with none of the experimentation that has been such a part of American music. They are for the most part enjoyable, but apart from one are hardly representative of great American piano music of which there is much.

Bernstein’s Thirteen Anniversaries was written between 1964 and 1988 and is more enigmatic than the three sets of works of the same name he wrote in the late 1940s. But like those works, these are miniatures written to celebrate persons important to him, so we have one dedicated to his wife and another to his daughter Nina and No. 3 is a bluesy number dedicated to Stephen Sondheim with whom he worked on West Side Story. I was intrigued by Number 7 which is dedicated In memoriam to his old piano teacher and latterly secretary Helen Coates but presumably these works were completed by 1988 and when she died in 1989 Bernstein added the dedication prior to publication. It recycles music from Bernstein’s Mass which was itself recycled in the Meditations from Mass for cello and orchestra/piano. Ms Enger proves effective in conveying its dark brooding nature.

For some reason, Ms Enger chooses to take out the faster of the Seven Traceries by William Grant Still and play the four slower ones. She further takes liberties with the composer’s metronome marks and Nos 1 and 5 are way slower than his markings. These are impressionistic, jazz-like nocturnes constructed around advanced harmonies and are some of my favourite works by this composer, though they work better when played in the complete suite.

In 2000 Ned Rorem told me that he did not think he would write any more music, a) because no one commissioned him and b) he felt he had said everything he wanted to say musically. But happily and sadly, that was not the case. The events of 9/11 kick kick-started his creativity and soon after that tragic day he began Aftermath, a ten-song-cycle about war and mortality. In 2005, he wrote his last substantial work and the last of his seven operas Our Town, which has proven very popular on the university circuit in the USA.

Rorem’s personality was perfectly reflected in his music; he could be either utterly charming or very difficult. The works here, extracted from two suites he wrote in 2003, are from the former side. The Wind Remains, in memory of his great friend the writer and sometime composer Paul Bowles, is part two of the triptych called Recalling. Bowles is elegiacally ‘recalled’ via a quote from one of his small operas. Soundpoints, was a suite of five small studies composed for pianist Gilles Vonsattel, here Ms Enger extracts Nos 1, 3 and 5. It is odd she plays No 3 which is exactly what it says it is a Short Bridge between No 2 which is a brilliant toccata and No 4 which is a quirky waltz. It does not quite work between Nos 1 and 5. No 5 Looking Back quotes from Rorem’s famous 1957 song Early in the Morning and easily the most ingratiating. As with the William Grant Still she misses out the faster movements but at least here she adheres to the composer’s metronome marks.

John Corigliano’s Anniversary for Lenny was written in anticipation of the Bernstein centenary in 2018 and is a lyrical lullaby very much in the style of Bernstein’s own works. The same is true of Craig Urquhart’s two vignettes. Likewise, Rorem pupil Daron Hagen’s nocturne in memory of his mother and extracted from a suite of nocturnes representing family members, is reminiscent of his teacher. For such a short work it takes a while to get to its Rorem-like, fragmented melody. Maybe it works better in the suite but out of context it does not make an impact.

I wish I could say that the works by the three women composers were better than they are, but sadly not. Margaret Ruthven Lang’s Twilight sounds like the Victorian salon music which it is, as does the arrangement of Price’s organ work Adoration even though that was written in 1951. JJ Hollingsworth’s The Vast Land from Under the Blue Dome is meant to evoke the prairie of her native Colorado. It is a rather gloomy chromatic passacaglia coloured by crunching dissonance and a curious lack of forward movement. It certainly does not convey, at least to me, wide open spaces under a brilliant blue sky.

With all the many works by Aaron Copland I am surprised that the programme includes piano arrangements of part of the music from his film score Our Town. Lovely as they are – and the waltz like The resting Place on the Hill, is truly beautiful – I cannot but feel that his late Down a Country Lane, or In the Evening Air would have been better choices.

Ms Enger plays many American works and made a good disc of Rorem’s late piano works for Naxos (review), which is why I do find her choice of repertoire here odd – as I do some of her tempi. This recital really does not live up to its promotional material. That said, there are some attractive works on this well-filled disc, and the engineers have captured a warm piano sound.

Paul RW Jackson

Contents
John Corigliano (b. 1938)
An Anniversary for Lenny (2016)
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)
Thirteen Anniversaries (1964-1988)
Craig Urquhart (b. 1953)
The Awakening (1986)
Adieu (2020)
William Grant Still (1895-1978)
Four extracts from Seven Traceries (1940)
JJ Hollingsworth (born 1956)
The Vast Land from Under the Blue Dome (1984)
Ned Rorem (1923-2022)
The Wind Remains (2003)
Excerpts from Soundpoints (2003)
Daron Hagen (b. 1961)
Gwen Leone Hagen, in memoriam from Five Nocturnes (2021)
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Three excerpts from Our Town(1940)
Margaret Ruthven Lang (1867-1972)
Twilight (1894)
Florence Price (1887-1953)
Adoration (1951)

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