Chadwick:
Euterpe
Angel
of
Death
Aphrodite
Melpomene
Thalia
Nashville
Symphony Orchestra
Kenneth Schermerhorn (conductor)
Naxos
Naxos seems to have a gift for tracking down and recording
under-heralded composers — especially Americans. George Whitefield
Chadwick (1854–1931), a major player on the turn-of-the-last-century
Boston musical scene, had some undeniable gifts as a composer: he could
orchestrate beautifully, with brilliance of sound appropriate to the material;
he knew how to pace a piece; above all, he could write good tunes. With the
aching, ultra-melodic ending of Angel of Death (his obvious paean to
Death and Transfiguration), Chadwick out Strauss-es Strauss for
longueurs; the aching violin solo in the midst of Aphrodite is
Puccini-like, lush and devastating.. These pieces, the shortest running just
over nine minutes, are as involved and full of contrasts as large-scale
symphonies. Some work better than others — Aphrodite seems
shorter at just under half an hour than Melpomente does at 15 minutes
— but they are all worthwhile. This disc leaves little doubt as to
Chadwick's gifts
Kenneth Schermerhorn leads the excellent Nashville Symphony, a group that ought to get more recognition than it does, in clear and colorful interpretations. Chadwick had an ear for the orchestra, and Schermerhorn finds his way in and out of all the tone colors, pacing things properly and allowing melodic ideas to bounce off one another. One telling example: the low brass chorale in The Angel of Death, a compelling and powerful moment, would not be so effective if Schermerhorn didn't whip up an appropriate tutti furor elsewhere for contrast.
According to our standard ideas of how "Americana" should sound (ideas
established by Aaron Copland's work a couple of generations later), Chadwick's
music all sounds German, more Wagnerian and Straussian than anything else. Even
during the composer's lifetime, this sort of Teutonic American music (written as
well by Arthur Foote and John Knowles Paine, among others) became passé; now it
might read as clunky and un-nationalistic. But Chadwick's importance ought not
to be overlooked. In the excellent liner notes, Steven Ledbetter says of him
that ".he became the first composer of concert music whose works often show the
snap, the wit, the independence of the American." Listen to the way
Thalia progresses to its rousing and bombastic ending — it's
part Beethoven, part John Philip Sousa! Though Chadwick's style was ultimately
trumped by Copland's starker, more French-inspired modernism (not to mention two
wars with Germany), this is music that ought not to be overlooked. And at the
usual Naxos discount, what have you got to lose?
