George Frederick McKay
was known as the dean of American Northwestern
composers and served for many years
on the faculty of the University of
Washington at Seattle. By all accounts
a beloved teacher and mentor, McKay’s
commercial success as a composer was
limited by his desire to work and perform
mainly in his native area, only rarely
venturing to larger musical capitals
to have his works heard. A neo-romantic,
McKay’s music fits comfortably into
the realm of his more famous contemporaries
such as Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland,
although his sound is not as European
as Barber’s nor is it as indebted to
folk song as Copland.
In 1941 McKay entered
his new violin concerto in a competition
then newly established by Jascha Heifetz
and the Carl Fischer Publishing House.
Although the work did not win, it was
favorably received by Heifetz and received
an honorable mention. By the time he
entered the competition, he was already
a well-established and experienced composer,
and one hearing of this sweeping work
is all it takes to note his maturity
and virtuosity. Devoid of show for its
own sake, the concerto still makes sizeable
demands on the player with the dual
need for fleet fingers and with its
biggish orchestration, a hefty romantic
tone. Brian Reagin, concertmaster of
the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra
delivers a powerful and mature performance.
His tone is warm and rich and he makes
his way around the fingerboard with
confident ease. His playing is certainly
on a par with some of his big name colleagues,
and one can hope to hear more of his
solo playing soon. He is at one with
the spirit of this music, and delivers
an interpretation with integrity and
conviction.
The Suite on Sixteenth
Century Hymn tunes struck an instant
chord with this Anglican listener for
it clever and respectful use of some
of our staple hymnody, and its skilled
orchestration and clever melodic and
harmonic variation. The Sinfonietta
No. 4 of 1942 packs a great deal
of rhythmic and harmonic interest in
to a very compact work. Starting off
with a brief but captivating opening
movement, its ever-forward motion is
a great musical pick-me up. The lengthier
and more lyrical second movement is
somewhat reminiscent of the great film
scores of the thirties and forties,
and has some lovely and serene moments.
The work rounds off with an energetic
and virtuosic finale.
Finally, the Song
Over the Great Plains is a somewhat
nostalgic look at the composer’s home
in the American Northwest with a tale-telling
protagonist in the person of the piano
soloist. Ludmilla Kovaleva delivers
an able and solid performance.
The National Radio
Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine responds
splendidly to its guest American conductor
John McLaughlin Williams, who is completely
and convincingly at one with this music.
He creates a fine sound from the string
sections and unlike many orchestras
from this part of the world, the winds
and brass play with utter sensitivity,
fine solo sounds where applicable and
with spot-on intonation and tone. How
interesting it is that a fine American
conductor recording first-rate American
music has to travel to the other side
of the globe to bring it to life.
The joy is that Naxos
is willing and in fact happy to bring
this kind of music to the world’s attention.
What reeks is that it would probably
take an act of Congress to get this
exceptionally fine music played in an
American concert hall. Such is the industry
in this big land of ours, and we can
thank our lucky stars that Klaus Heymann
is the man of vision that he is. Long
may he live!
First rate performances
of fascinating and worthy compositions
by a master composer whose work lies
sadly unrecognized in our very midst.
Add this one to your collection and
be prepared for some real delights.
Kevin Sutton
see also review
by John Leeman
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
