Christopher ROUSE (1949-2019)
Symphony No. 5 (2015) [30:00]
Supplica (2013) [12:19]
Concerto for Orchestra (2008) [29:02]
Nashville Symphony/Giancarlo Guerrero
rec. 2017-2019, Laura Turner Concert Hall, Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville, USA
NAXOS 8.559852 [71:32]
The Concerto for Orchestra is a near half-hour of uninterrupted music, and one wonders how any human being can ever find the time to set down so many notes. The first half of the work is in five sections, alternating fast and slow, whereas the second begins with a longer slow section leading to a hair-raising, rapid coda. The composer, quoted in the booklet, seems no more able than many composers to find the words to help the listener find a way into what is, after all, quite difficult music to assimilate at first hearing. When he writes, for instance, that the two sections that make up the second half of the work are ‘meant to represent a sort of “full blossoming” of the related ideas from their counterparts earlier on’ one can just about understand what he might be driving at. But for it to be any use the listener needs to able to recognise these thematic ‘ideas’ in the first place. The truth is that the work’s thematic content, though rich, is made up of elements that you are unlikely to be whistling on your way home from the concert. Now, after three hearings of this remarkable work, I am just about beginning – and I put it no higher than that – to establish some recognition of Rouse’s ‘related ideas’. Two things, in particular, are beyond doubt. First, once you have heard this work for the first time you are impatient to hear it again. And second, few composers are quite so skilled at writing fast music. The closing passage, for example is a masterly example of music of huge energy and cumulative momentum and power. Think of a far more dissonant version of Walton – the scherzo of the First Symphony, for instance – and you’re not far from describing this music.
If the Concerto for Orchestra, as one might expect, allows individual members of the ensemble to shine – piccolo and harp, to cite but two – the aural texture of Supplica is very different. This piece, slow throughout its length and heavily reliant on the strings, was apparently composed in response to an ‘inner compulsion’. The work is elegiac, even sombre, and certainly sounds like an expression of some profound sentiment. The musical language is tonal for the most part – certain passages could almost be by Mahler – with occasional more violent interruptions featuring the brass. The ending is resigned but equivocal. Supplica is a very fine piece that lingers in the mind.
Music lovers are well aware of Mahler’s superstitious fears when it came to composing his ninth symphony. I rather think that contemporary symphonists wary of previous icons will be just as apprehensive when it comes to composing a fifth (and having previously had reason to pause when the third was taking shape.) Christopher Rouse explains quite openly that it was through Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony that he found his way into classical music, and that when the time came to compose his own fifth he did not hesitate to pay direct homage. So it is that Rouse’s Fifth begins with ‘fate knocking at the door’ in the form of the same four-note rhythm that opens Beethoven’s masterpiece. There are many points in the work where one suspects that Rouse is evoking Beethoven again, and I have no doubt that detailed study of the score would reveal many more references, probably deeply hidden. The work is in three – or, you could convincingly argue, four – movements played without a break, and many of the qualities that one appreciated in the Concerto for Orchestra are in evidence here. The music seems to have been conceived in orchestral terms from the outset, and the composer’s writing for orchestra is of virtuoso standard. He clearly enjoyed writing music that was both fast and loud, and made great use of brass and – especially – percussion to achieve his aim. The music is often highly dissonant, though many passages display firmly tonal roots, and the range of feeling and emotion evoked in the music is very varied and very wide.
Christopher Rouse died in September 2019, just a few months after the recording dates of two of the works on this disc. One wonders if he was present in October 2017 for the recording of the symphony. If he was, he could only have been thrilled. The playing of the Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero is simply stunning in all three works. This vividly recorded disc will be an essential purchase for anyone interested in contemporary orchestral composition. Is it a good entry point for those new to Rouse? Maybe, though it is true that his output is more varied than is represented here. For much of the time, though, the term ‘roller-coaster’ would be too tame. Better for a newcomer to imagine being at the wheel of some irresistibly powerful machine, safely out of harm’s way on some circuit or other, as the Fifth Symphony, like the Concerto for Orchestra, drives its exuberant way towards a madcap close.
William Hedley
Previous review: Robert Cummings
