Originally released
on Delos this coupling now reappears
over a decade later in Naxos’s American
Classics series.
Composed in 1943 the
Second Symphony’s Moderato opening movement
is full of freshness and open-air freedoms.
The intense string figure that unveils
at its opening soon gives way to animation
and dancing vigour and an alternate
ease and tension soon develops, one
that recurs throughout. The culmination
is the canonic brass chorale that ends
the movement in solemn reflection. The
slow movement is certainly affecting,
with its winding clarinet and flute
solos, but never seeks solace in overt
melancholy and indeed searches momentarily
for blues tinged textures whilst the
brief finale wraps things up with terpsichorean
dynamism a-plenty.
The Sixth Symphony
was composed to celebrate the 75th
season of the Boston Symphony. It was
first performed – and recorded - by
the orchestra under Charles Munch. Here
the internal contrasts that Piston promoted
in the Second reappear – between the
craggy determinism of the opening of
the symphony and its contrastive rather
beautiful impressionism (appropriately
so of course given the musical leanings
of the orchestra). Such cogent and concentrated
painting itself collides with the fizzing
rhythmic high jinks of the super-fast
Scherzo (Leggerissimo Vivace – and that’s
no mistake) and the longest of the four
movements, the seamless, superb adagio,
with its solo cello cantilena and unimpeachable
and affecting logic. The finale is brash
and brassy and four minutes worth of
virtuoso energy.
The Seattle Symphony
under Schwarz wear Boston’s mantle in
the Sixth with no little distinction.
The bold animation of the performances
and the idiomatic freshness of the orchestral
solos are matched by the warmth of the
recorded sound. This was a highly distinguished
release back in 1990 and now over a
decade later, in its new incarnation,
its merit burns just as brightly.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review
by Lance Nixon
Seattle Symphony/Gerard Schwarz 