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Ned ROREM (b.
1923)
Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra (1998) [32:21] After Reading Shakespeare (1981) [21:53]
Jaime Laredo
(violin); Sharon Robinson (cello)
IRIS Orchestra/Michael Stern
rec. 4 April 2004, Germantown Performing Arts
Center, Tennessee (concerto); 23-24 March 1982,
Astoria Studios, New York (Shakespeare) NAXOS 8.559316 [54:14]
Not
many have been as gifted with both words and notes as Ned
Rorem is. His autobiographical writings, such as The Paris
Diary (1966), The New York Diary (1967), An
Absolute Gift (1974) and Knowing When to Stop (1994),
would have gained him a considerable fame even if his music
had been a good deal less accomplished than it is; and, of
course, the fame of the music itself is quite independent
of Rorem’s gifts as a writer. That he has the rare kind of
mind and creativity which function equally well in words
and music perhaps lies behind his particular brilliance as
a composer of songs – he composes settings with a musician’s
skill, but he also composes them with a writer’s understanding
of how words work. This present CD makes one wonder, contrariwise,
whether when it comes to his instrumental music Rorem’s facility
with words might not sometimes be a distraction.
The
two soloists on this CD – the husband and wife team of violinist
Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson – have apparently
been friends of Rorem’s for some twenty five years. The solo
cello suite was written specifically for Robinson in 1980
and premiered at Alice Tully Hall in New York on 15 March
1981; in 1985 Rorem wrote his Violin Concerto “at Jaime’s
behest”, to use Rorem’s own words. In 1998 a commission from
the Indianapolis Symphony provided an opportunity for the
composition of the Double Concerto for Laredo and Robinson.
Rorem’s
booklet note on the Double Concerto contains the following
rather odd statement: “Music being the least representational
of the arts (it does not depict other than itself), the overall
title is abstract: Double Concerto. Nevertheless,
just to get the juices flowing, I did impose “concrete” titles
onto the eight movements, which require 35 minutes to unfold.
These titles connote whatever the listener chooses”. (They
are, for the sake of reference: Morning - Adam and Eve – Mazurka
- Staying on Alone - Their Accord – Looking - Conversation
at Midnight - Flight). I find this hard to unravel. Particularly
the suggestion, on the one hand, that the titles were “imposed” on
the movements – which surely suggests that the music existed
before titles were “imposed” on it? And, on the other hand,
the suggestion that the titles were invented so that the
composer might “get the juices flowing” – which surely suggests
that the words existed before the music? In any case, we
are told that the titles should “connote whatever the listener
chooses” – which makes them meaningless and surely makes
their presence pointless. Save that they don’t seem to be
quite meaningless – Rorem goes on to declare “I will state
only that in Adam and Eve the two soloists are literally
born on stage: they emerge from the womb of the orchestra” (which
is, incidentally, a pretty strange use of the word ‘literally!).
In the case of After Reading Shakespeare Rorem’s notes contain
some similarly distracting statements. In this work seven
of the nine movements carry the name of characters – Lear
(twice), Katharine, Titania and Oberon, Caliban, Portia,
Iago and Othello – and two are given titles in the form
of quotations from Shakespeare’s Sonnets “Why hear’st thou
music sadly?” (Sonnet 8) and “Remembrance of things past” (Sonnet
30).
Can the listener assume that there is a programmatic
significance to these titles? Apparently not, according to
Rorem: “The individual titles were not fixed notions around
which I framed the music; they emerged, as titles for non-vocal
pieces so often do, during the composition. Yes, I was rereading
Shakespeare that July … Yet the experience did not so much
inspire the music itself as provide a cohesive program upon
which the music might be formalized, and thus intellectually
grasped by the listener. Indeed, some of the titles were
added after the fact, as when parents christen their children”.
This is a bit easier to understand as a description of the
process of creation, but it still leaves one suspicious that
these titles, apparently intended to make it easier for the
listener to “grasp” the music actually get in the way. Certainly
my own experience with After Reading Shakespeare (and, indeed,
with the Double Concerto) was that listening with the titles
to hand trapped me into a finally rather unrewarding attempt
to invent connections between the sounds I was hearing and
the titles in my hand. Once I gave up that exercise and concentrated
on the sounds themselves, the whole experience was a good
deal more rewarding. Both of these pieces are good, interesting
pieces of music; they are not programmatic music and the
half-suggestion which Rorem makes that we might treat them
as such does them a disservice.
The
Double Concerto is scored for relatively modest forces – eight
winds, four brass and strings. The absence of percussion
prompts a delightfully wry observation from the conductor: “In
growing older I have come to feel that percussion is, at
best, mere decoration, at worst, immoral, like too many earrings
or too many exclamation points!!”). Too much ‘exclamation’,
being over-demonstrative isn’t something that Rorem’s music
here goes in for. It operates more subtly and prefers understatement
as its dominant idiom. A gentle, reflective opening and a
(relatively) vertiginous conclusion frame six movements which
vary in length from less than two minutes to more than fourteen.
In the longest movement (‘Conversation at Midnight’) the
dialogue of the two solo instruments is heard at its most
interesting, the tonal interplay quite delightful. In a brief
but busy movement (‘Mazurka’), both soloists are given some
attractively lilting music; ‘Staying on Alone’ is a beautiful
song for cello. Throughout both soloists play with utter
conviction and gentle certainty of intention and execution,
and Stern is a wholly sympathetic accompanist. If you insist
on all your contemporary music being challenging, if you
demand that contemporary music push back boundaries and extend
instrumental techniques and resources, then you will presumably
know better than to turn to Rorem’s work to satisfy your
tastes. If, on the other hand, you can be content, at least
now and then, with essentially tonal writing in which the
performers use traditional instrumental techniques in the
service of music of unembarrassed lyrical beauty, then you
will surely enjoy this Double Concerto.
Rorem’s
suite for solo cello is another attractive work, a little
more searching, perhaps, in its exploitation of the instrument’s
technical resources, though the idiom remains largely traditional.
There are movements of powerful drama, with a sense of barely
suppressed aggression or intense emotional pain; there are
movements characterised by a sense of enduring melancholy
and others that at least approach the playful. Sharon Robinson
is an authoritative soloist and I intend no criticism of
her if I suggest that the work is so rich in possibilities
that I would like to hear alternative readings of it alongside
hers.
I
enjoyed the balance on this CD of the relative opulence of
an orchestral work alongside a work for unaccompanied solo
cello. Both are rewarding works, both get high quality performances
on this well-recorded CD.
Glyn Pursglove
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