With this edition
in its ever-expanding and consistently
intriguing American Classics series,
Naxos introduces the music of contemporary
composer, Kenneth Fuchs. There are
three works that span his creative
life from the mid-1980s and the present
day.
Fuchs is of the generation
of composers that grew up under the
tutelage of the American neo-romantics
(Fuchs' teachers included David Diamond)
caught between the pull of the atonal
avant-garde and the fascination of
minimalism. Fuchs' idiom is strongly
influenced by the latter, and he brings
to it an ear for orchestral colour
and the nuances of the American sounds
that permeate the works of Copland,
among others.
The first work on
the disc is the most interesting.
An American Place is a tone
poem for large orchestra. It is as
colourful as it is quintessentially
American - in a soft-edged, optimistic,
mid-Western kind of way. In his booklet
notes, Fuchs says that the score of
An American Place "reflects
the palette of musical sounds that
have developed in the United States
during the last hundred years ...
and is intended to suggest the rich
body of music created by the American
symphonists who have come before me
and from whom I continue to take inspiration."
The influence of Fuchs' fellow American
composers is certainly strong, with
hints of Adams, Copland, Sondheim
and Diamond, among others, surfacing
in the score. There are also more
international influences at play.
There is for example a reference to
Bartók in the clarinet runs
from Bluebeard's ‘lake of tears’ at
around 11:08, which Fuchs contrasts
wonderfully with bluesy brass. To
my ears at least, there’s also a nod
towards the sound-world of Walton
from 12:48. However, while referential,
the music never strays into pastiche.
Fuchs' use of contrasting rhythmic
motifs in the strings and tuned percussion
and his characterful writing for woodwinds
and brass are quite individual. The
orchestral playing is exemplary and
the conducting sympathetic and true.
I do have one quibble: the booklet
notes state that the world premiere
performance was given by JoAnn Falletta
and her Virginia Symphony Orchestra
in March 2005, some eighteen months
after this performance with the London
Symphony Orchestra was recorded. It
would be a shame if this discrepancy
is a typographical error, and a greater
one if this piece had to wait so long
after its completion for a public
hearing.
The second work on
the disc, Eventide, is less
substantial. A concerto for cor anglais
in one movement, it seems to fall
into three sections. There is a pastoral
opening that conjures an atmosphere
not too distant from that of Vaughan
Williams' The Lark Ascending.
This is followed by an eerie second
section from about 6:58, with gentle
dissonances in the strings and over-blowing
of the cor anglais darkening the mood.
Then a cadenza at 11:43 leads into
a rhythmically driven finale which
fades, after recalling the two previous
sections, into resignation. The influence
of the spiritual tunes that inspired
the piece is fleetingly felt. Thomas
Stacy, the work's dedicatee, plays
with subtlety and feeling, although
he is a perhaps a little too closely
balanced.
The final work is
a suite of three movements, each inspired
by a different painting by the abstract
expressionist artist, Helen Frankenthaler
(the picture that inspired the final
movement appears on the CD cover).
Fuchs wrote Out of the Dark
in the 1980s while in his late 20s.
Originally scored for wind, string
quartets and French horn, Falletta
urged the composer to create the version
for chamber orchestra presented here,
and although the string quartet scaffolding
could perhaps do with more support
in the first movement, it is quite
successful. The piece seems to represent
something of Fuchs' own musical journey,
beginning in a warm but atonal soundscape
and moving "out of the dark"
into a warmer, more tonal idiom in
the third movement. This features
some lovely writing for horn, rendered
well by Timothy Jones.
Falletta has known
and worked with Fuchs since their
days at the Juilliard School in the
mid-1980s, and her understanding of
his music shows in her rhythmically
aware and assured conducting. The
London Symphony Orchestra is right
with her in every bar, and the acoustic
of St Luke's adds a generous warmth
to the recording, supporting the atmosphere
of the pieces far more sympathetically
than the somewhat unforgiving Barbican
would have done; this notwithstanding
the perhaps overgenerous praise heaped
upon the LSO's home in the booklet
notes.
Altogether, then,
a strong release. All three works
are accessible and rather lovely,
and although Eventide and Out
of the Dark may not demand repeated
listening, An American Place
alone is worth the price of the disc.
Tim Perry
London Symphony Orchestra/JoAnn Falletta 
