Charles
Martin Loeffler, Edward Burlingame Hill, Charles Griffes, Arthur
Farwell and Louis Coerne between them represent various strands
of the American romantic-exotic tendency. This particular group
straddle the 19th into the 20th centuries. Griffes and Hill sometimes
echo the Gallic-Impressionist style. Farwell was famous for his
'Indianist' works but his Dunsany-based tone poem The Gods of
the Mountains and Coerne's Excalibur (both to be represented on
Bridge's reissues of the SPAMH Krueger LP series of
the 1960s) touch on a gaudy Russian approach with a Lisztian leaning
towards legend and the tone poem.
Loeffler's
talents as represented here by his music for string quartet will
likely appeal to you if your tastes run to the chamber music of
Franck, Chausson and Lekeu. Two of the three works are from the
1880s and 1890s. Both bear the traditional titles we associate
with the late romantic era. The 1917 Music for Four Stringed
Instruments does not adopt the revolutionary idiom we might
expect from the non-conformist title. True we are in a new and
murdurous age but for Loeffler the style of expression is still
well and truly rooted in nineteenth century mulch. The bald title
recognises the new world of poison gas, airplanes, mass produced
Maxim and Hotchkiss machine guns and silent assailants in submarines.
The reality is that Loeffler is more at ease in the romantic grand
gesture than in the 'wild man' antics of Cowell and Ornstein.
Rob
Barnett
DaVinci Quartet with Cora
Cooper (violin) in Quintet