The Czech NSO seem to have carved for themselves a name as an orchestra prepared
to try unfamiliar music. Their couple of Chadwick discs for Reference Recordings
and Jose Serebrier are outstanding and it is good to see them receptive to
such opportunities. I hope that there will be more.
Sowerby's music was known to me long before these two Çédille
discs. A friend sent me a tape of Solti's Chicago performance of the overture
Comes Autumn Time. Another sent me two major orchestral works.
The Third Symphony is memorable for its sun-dappled Delianism
counter-poised by vigorous warlike convulsions in strutting conflict. The
Violin Concerto (1913 rev 1924) would have made quite a splash had
it been taken up by Albert Sammons. Its tone in song and summer-time idylls
would have suited his concert character. For a work with a reflective caste
of mind the finale features an enlivening rhythmic impulse and, at the close,
the big-hearted open skies confidence of Bax's 4th symphony. These two works
must surely be the subject of later projects - perhaps from Naxos?
This Çédille disc and the reliably informative notes of Frank
Crociata bring us to the music via fascinating paths. Who would have thought
that Sowerby was in the top ten of American composers in the 1920s and 1930s.
I did not know that Sowerby had the Prix de Rome and a residency in Rome
alongside Howard Hanson in 1922-24. Hanson remained a Sowerby supporter and
included Comes Autumn Time as the first of a series of American Music
78s in 1939.
I had taken it that Sowerby's four movement From the Northland
was a Scandinavian piece. In fact its four movements were inspired
by a Canadian car tour of the Lake Superior and Lake Huron area in 1919.
Sowerby's mother was Canadian. How typical though that it should have been
written in Italy. Northern inspirations such as Sibelius's Nightride and
Sunrise, Peterson-Berger's Sunnanfard and Nystroem's Sinfonia
del Mare were all written in Italy.
There are four movements. Forest Voices could so easily have
been a Macdowell-style rhapsody. Sowerby's grip on the mood is much more
personal. His tendency to languor is apparent from the hush and the woodwind
interrogatories and answers. However the music rises to a rousing brass oration
- generous of pace and peppery of tonality though 'nowt to frighten the horses.'
Cascades is Debussian rhapsodic, rustling with birdcalls and
harp and flute arpeggiation. The Burnt Rock Pool is a Walden-like
soliloquy over a pool of a depth past plunge of plummet. The Shining
Big-Sea Water has the billowing power of sun-embossed waves and an
impersonal energy. Then come two Sandburg inspirations. Carl Sandburg's concern
with folksy pastoral America appealed to Sowerby. In The
Prairie Sowerby seems to describe the landscape in terms of both
plush shimmering Delian atmosphere and invigorating cold snaps. Theme
in Yellow (a very rare piece) is a feline Bolero with a jazzy
lively pulse, the rhythmic liveliness of Baxian stab and cross cut, the sultry
air of early Florent Schmitt and a meandering rhapsodic inclination which
reminded me of Franz Waxman's music for The Bride of Frankenstein. Yes, I
was surprised too.
Rob Barnett
Czech National SO/Paul
Freeman
