We have here another
in Naxos’s American Music Series. When
it first started, it was difficult at
the time to see what could be recorded
after Schuman, Copland, Harris and the
like, but Naxos should be extremely
proud of this very extensive series.
They have turned up a wealth of music,
not many of them masterpieces but of
extreme interest to music lovers looking
for something a little out of the ordinary.
They are not skimping on artists either
so one can be sure of at least a decent
performance at a rock bottom price.
George Frederick McKay
was a composer domiciled in the U.S.
Northwest, and Naxos have already released
a couple of discs of his music, one
of them also conducted by John McLaughlin
Williams, albeit with a different orchestra.
The composer is one of the few that
received all of his musical education
in the U.S., unlike many of his colleagues
who usually had a spell in France, Germany
or the Scandinavian countries. He attended
University of Washington, Seattle and
the Eastman School of Music in Rochester.
After graduating in 1923, he then had
teaching posts in North Carolina, South
Dakota and Missouri. His final position
was as Professor of Music at Washington
State University, Seattle. He had an
extremely successful career in music,
including composing, teaching and leading
in the appreciation of American Music.
His time of maximum fame was in the
1930s and 1940s.
It is therefore surprising
how relatively little he is remembered.
I hope that Naxos’s efforts will go
some way towards rectifying this situation.
His most substantial work on this disc
is his Violin Concerto which he entered
in the Heifetz Competition in 1940.
He thought it had a good chance of winning
the competition, but in the event, it
received only an honourable mention,
although having been praised by Heifetz
himself. The reason for this lack of
success was probably influenced by the
composer being thought of as an artist
working away from the main musical centres,
being at the time resident in Seattle,
not known as a high quality musical
centre.
The Concerto was apparently
modelled upon the Max Bruch First Violin
Concerto in G minor, but little of this
influence is readily apparent. Like
many other traditional American orchestral
works, it is beautifully crafted, and
well orchestrated. It appears to be
well written for the soloist, but like
other similar works, its lyrical inspiration
can at times appear limited.
The other works on
this disc are similarly attractive.
Particular mention needs to be made
of the beautiful Meditation of the Suite,
and the Moderato pastorale of the Sinfonietta.
These two movements alone make the disc
well worth purchasing.
At the beginning of
this American Series, some of the ensembles
chosen for the work did not seem to
be comfortable with the American cross-rhythms,
but the Ukraine orchestra has done enough
of this work now to sound totally idiomatic
under Williams’ sure leadership. The
performances of all of these works are
excellent and I do urge you to try them.
I can thoroughly recommend
this issue to the collector, but do
not be mislead – this is not American
music as we know of it today. Well done
Naxos – another first class issue well
played, performed and recorded by all
concerned. Add to this exemplary notes
on the music, the excellent soloist
and conductor and all at a rock bottom
price.
John Phillips
see
also review by John Leeman
see also
George
Frederick McKAY (1899-1970)
Caricature
Dance Suite (1924)From My Tahoe
Window - Summer Moods and Patterns,
Americanistic Etude (1924) An April
Suite (1924) Dance Suite No. 2 (1938)
Dancing in a Dream (1945) Excerpts
from Five Songs for Soprano (1964)
Every Flower That Ever Grew (1969)
Suite for Viola and Piano (1948) 
William Logan, Logan Skelton, Sanford
Margolis (piano) Joan Morris (mezzo-soprano)
Mahoko Eguchi (viola) rec July 1999-Feb
2001, The Brookwood Studio, Ann Arbour,
MI, USA DDD
NAXOS AMERICAN CLASSICS 8.559143
[64.00] [RB]
George
Frederick McKAY (1899-1970)
From A Moonlit Ceremony (1945) Harbor
Narrative (1934) Evocation Symphony
"Symphony for Seattle" (1951)
National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine
- John McLaughlin Williams Naxos
American Classics 8.559052 DDD [69:06]
A NOTE FROM THE
G F MCKAY ESTATE
McKay is a historic
West Coast American composer, and full
information can be found at www.georgefrederickmckaymusic.com
Our ancestry
traces back to Great Britain; with the
first McKay in America being an English
Army Officer who fought with Burgoyne's
outfit at Bennington and escaped back
to Canada with the loyalists and Canadian
troops he commanded. Captain Samuel
McKay had been an advance scout for
the campaign, and had been captured
in previous actions (there is correspondence
between him and George Washington in
the Library of Congress here in the
States, in regard to McKay's petition
to be exchanged for an American prisoner).
He later escaped and made it back to
British lines.
Samuel was married
to a noble French Colonial lady and
his son became a French professor at
Williams College in New York State.
Hence the McKays were launched into
the American scene.
This particular
recording has been a long time in the
process of production, actually starting
before the McKay Orchestral CD, which
has been very successful and has been
played on wonderful radio stations here
in the US and other countries. CBC in
Toronto has done quite a few prime-time
segments, and the Native American themes
contained in the orchestra works have
been heard on the same programs with
Mozart and Beethoven, which is quite
a revolutionary development. As I was
saying, it took quite a long time to
assemble the pieces done by William
Bolcom because of his heavy schedule
- he was writing and producing the opera
A View From the Bridge which
was premiered by the Chicago Lyric Opera,
and will now have a run at the Met this
year; he is head of the Music School
at the University of Michigan, he and
his wife Joan Morris do 30 concert dates
per year, and he is always composing
new works regularly performed by major
orchestras.
Bolcom first
studied composition with my father (G
F McKay) at the University of Washington
at a very young age, so this recording
represents many things in terms of the
progression of musical expression from
the Northwest corner of America - along
with being an important link between
serious music and Jazz Age themes coming
out of the West Coast environment.
There is some
music contained in the recording bordering
on the experimental, if viewed in the
historical context in which it was composed,
and Bolcom expressed to me in phone
conversations that Dance Suite No. 2
was a fairly difficult piece to pull
off as a pianist. My father would have
enjoyed every minute of this experience,
since he was very happy with everything
he composed and was enamored of participatory
musicianship, both in his teaching methods
and in the professional arena, where
he both conducted symphony orchestras,
and was a professional player early
in his life (violin and viola).
We have 70 orchestral
pieces yet to record, so the McKay story
has a long way to go, no to mention
the cantatas, ballet music and a large
number of organ works and several string
quartets and many great band pieces.
Fred McKay
George Frederick McKay Estate
Edmonds, WA
-----------------------------
I was reading
through your review, and came across
a mention of Bartok in relation to George
Frederick McKay, and so goes this tale:
I was talking
during a family gathering to Gerald
Kechley, a fine University of Washington
composer and professor and a student
of McKay's who was a first-hand witness
to McKay presenting Bartok at a concert-lecture
in Seattle in the early 1940's---------the
University of Washington, perhaps spurred
on by McKay, had sought to offer a faculty
position to Bartok, which he never took
because of his terminal cancer-------------at
any rate McKay being his usual jovial
self asked Bartok "are you going
to continue composing revolutionary
music? Bartok, says Kechley, replied
"My music is not revolutionary,
it is evolutionary!" This story
was not passed down in our family, so
it was amusing to hear this during the
1990's when most people in Seattle had
forgotten that Bartok had been here,
or even that he knew where the place
was.
There was a similar
story about a McKay-Beecham encounter
that was amusing but a little less stuffy,
with the result that the McKay family
made a pleasant acquaintance with Sir
Thomas during his stay in Seattle, including
a performance of an original modern
work by George Frederick McKay with
the Seattle Symphony. I discovered through
research that Beecham had come to the
University of Washington and conducted
the student orchestra there as a community
relations trip, to the delight of everyone
involved.
Oh, and we did
listen to a lot of Bartok 33's when
I was growing up, so perhaps the comment
was brotherly after all, and my Dad
loved the modern and open themes in
Bartok's works.
Hope this is
not too trying, but these are kind of
poignant stories that make up the fabric
of the real world.
Cheers!
Fred McKay
