George ANTHEIL (1900-1959)
McConkey's Ferry (Washington at Trenton): A Concert Overture
(1948)
Symphony no 4 ('1942') (1944)
Symphony no 6 (1948)
National Symphony
Orchestra of the Ukraine/Theodore Kuchar
Recorded at the Grand Concert Hall of the National Radio Company of Ukraine,
18-22 December 1998
NAXOS 8.559033
[67:43]
Crotchet
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George Antheil was one of twentieth century music's most unusual characters.
Born in New Jersey in 1900, he moved to Paris in the 1920s to study with,
amongst others, Nadia Boulanger, and to join the côterie of
avant-garde artists and writers already established there. He set out to
become the enfant terrible of music (later, his autobiography, published
in 1945, was to be called Bad Boy of Music). This phase of his career
reached its climax in 1927 with the sensational American première
of his Ballet Mécanique, scored for, inter alia, 16 pianos,
pianola, eight xylophones, doorbells, car-horns, anvils and aeroplane propeller:
its hostile reception persuaded the composer to tread more orthodox paths
(the work was revived in 1953, but by then was seen as no more than a rather
harmless curiosity).
In due course Antheil returned to the USA and settled in Hollywood, writing
a number of film scores and enjoying considerable success as a 'serious'
composer in works (such as the three on this disc) of a markedly 'populist'
character. Meanwhile, he was busily pursuing a bizarre combination of other
interests. His writings ranged from detective novels to a treatise on the
endocrinology of criminals; he also wrote a widely syndicated newspaper agony
column. During World War II he worked as a war correspondent, which role
was to provide the inspiration for his Fourth Symphony. With the film actress
Hedy Lamarr, he invented a torpedo device, for which they actually filed
a patent: the invention related to ' . . . a secret communication system
involving the use of carrier waves of different frequencies, especially useful
in the remote control of dirigible craft, such as torpedoes'. (I owe this
information to the incomparable Nicolas Slonimsky, who drily adds: 'It is
not known whether the Antheil-Lamarr device was ever used in naval warfare'.)
In the years leading up to his death in 1959, Antheil's music was widely
performed in the USA - a 1947 survey listed him as one of the most performed
American composers - but, as the sleeve-note points out, 'after his death
his music was swiftly forgotten'. Hearing this music for the first time I
have to confess that I'm puzzled by this neglect. True, there is nothing
particularly original in the way he deploys a conservative tonal language,
and much of the music is derivative: both the symphonies on this disc owe
a great deal to Shostakovich (indeed, the notorious first movement theme
from Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony hovers as a brooding presence
throughout Antheil's Fourth); the slow movement of the Sixth could have been
written by Satie; and folksy stuff (à la Copland) also figures largely.
Nevertheless, the music is tuneful, full of energy and drive, widely contrasted
in moods and brilliantly orchestrated; Antheil also reveals a sure grasp
of structure and form (as in the fugal section of the Fourth Symphony's third
movement).
I enjoyed McConkey's Ferry (a self-declared 'patriotic' piece) rather
less than the symphonies, but that is neither here nor there. The recording
is bright and well-balanced and the performance excellent. If you enjoy
discovering previously unknown late-romantic symphonies, then this is a disc
worth sampling.
Adrian Smith
