Diamond, now blessedly
an elderly survivor, is of a generation
largely fallen to mortality’s scythe.
That generation includes Creston, Piston,
Schuman, Hanson, Sessions, Harris, Mennin
and Barber. Diamond’s music favours
Schuman, Mennin, Copland somewhat and
to a degree Sessions rather than Hanson
and Creston.
His music is difficult
to bracket. On the one hand he can weave
a diaphanously magical web of silky
melodic streams as he does breathtakingly
at the start of the Fourth Symphony
(memorably recorded by Bernstein and
the NYPO circa 1958 on Sony Classics).
On the other his music can be grippingly
motoric with intricate full-power rhythmic
actions criss-crossing as can be heard
in both the TOM ballet suite
and the Eighth Symphony (premiered
by the NYPO and Bernstein in 1960 two
years after they recorded the Fourth
for the then CBS). TOM is in twelve
brief movements. The projected ballet
was based on the anti-slavery novel
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s
Cabin. The scenario was drawn up
by e.e. cummings; George Balanchine
provided the choreography. The producer
was Lincoln Kerstein who became disenchanted
with the project which then came to
nothing. Despite Diamond’s attempts
to involve Massine in Paris there was
to be no production. As far as I know
it has still not found a stage premiere.
The acid-spit and convulsive upheaval
aspect of Diamond can be heard in The
Dance of the Slavetraders and Human
Bloodhounds (tr.6) where the influence
of The Rite of Spring is to the
fore. On the other hand Diamond’s more
peaceful strain can be heard in the
Prokofiev-like dreamy moonlit Dance
of New England and New Orleans.
This Sacred Ground
(Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
- printed in full in the booklet)
represents the public declamatory Diamond
and is of the tradition reflected in
Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, Roy
Harris’s Tenth Symphony and Randall
Thompson’s Testament of Freedom.
A nation celebrates its high calling
and principles hard won and over which
blood has been spilt. I am not sure
that this is Diamond completely heart-engaged
but it is done with craftsmanship and
great skill with multiple choirs lending
spectacle. Parce finds some episodes
a strain but his is a skilled and sincere
performance. I see that it was premiered
in 1963, dedicated to Josef Krips who
asked that Lincoln’s famous address
be set to music. The premiere was given
by Lukas Foss with the Buffalo Philharmonic
on 17 November 1963. Its admirable,
hand-on-heart, 1940s patriotism (not
all that distant from John Ireland’s
These Things Shall Be) must have
rattled anachronistically at the time,
teetering on the edge of flag-burning,
Vietnam, disillusion, drugs and a deeply
alienated youth culture.
The Eighth Symphony
carries a dedication to Copland
on his sixtieth birthday. The Bernstein
premier took place in October 1961.
The symphony is in two roughly quarter-hour
movements. There is plenty of vigorous
and intriguing rhythmic interest with
a faint atonal flavouring to the lyrical
dimension. The second movement takes
the form of a theme and variations topped
off with a double fugue linking back
thematically to the principal melody
of the first movement. In the final
movement the Seattle strings limn a
long-breathed melody which carries a
Bergian chilliness related to but never
mistakable for one of William Schuman’s
powerful adagios. The dreamy raindrop
succulence of the movement (8.46) veers
towards the drenched adagio succulence
of Valentin Silvestrov’s Fifth Symphony.
At about 12.55 the lulling magisterial
atmosphere is broken by rhythmic incursions
which sound a scorching counterpart
to the cross-cutting counterpoint of
the finale of Tippett’s Concerto
for Double String Orchestra.
These are Delos original
recordings from a project (the complete
symphonies of Piston, Schuman, Hanson,
Mennin, Diamond) whose boundless ambition
was not fully achieved when the money
ran out. They managed a complete Hanson
but the other series were left incomplete
- dying mid-step. It is good to see
Naxos rescuing these confidently realised
recordings and presenting them at an
extremely accessible price.
The helpful and accessibly
written notes are by Steven Lowe.
Rob Barnett
Erich Parce (baritone) 