Search - Amy Beach, Kenneth Schermerhorn, Nashville Symphony :: Amy Beach: "Gaelic" Symphony; Piano Concerto

Joseph B. (joebellanca) from MALVERN, PA
Reviewed on 7/5/2010...

Good romantic style piano concerto which is not in the common repertoire. Symphony is also enjoyable. Qaulity recording.

Two Sunny Beaches

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 08/05/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Oh, how I envy pianist Alan Feinberg. If I were a virtuoso pianist, his is the kind of career I'd choose. He specializes in mostly American, mostly new music and has the advantage of presenting generally unknown pieces to an admiring audience. He has recorded music by such composers as Andrew Imbrie (the Concerto), Charles Ives (Songs, other pieces), Charles Wuorinen (3rd Sonata, Trio), John Adams (China Gates), Henry Cowell, Mario Davidovsky, Ralph Shapey, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Leo Ornstein, Paul Bowles, and even Thelonious Monk, among others. He rarely plays 'old-fashioned' American music, although he has recorded some music by Charles Tomlinson Griffes, our primary impressionist composer. Here he plays, with the admirable support of the Nashville Symphony conducted by their long-time music director Kenneth Schermerhorn, the 1899 Piano Concerto of Amy Cheney Beach (1867-1944; known in my student days as Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, and invariably referred to by us whippersnappers as Mrs Haha Beach).The Piano Concerto is a four-movement, 37-minute, grandiloquent showpiece that is from the sound world of Grieg or MacDowell: melodious, big-gestured, rigorously crafted with an immediately discernible Romantic form--a crowd-pleaser if ever there was one. And in its day it pleased many concert-goers. Beach herself played the solo part at its 1900 première by the Boston Symphony. It was recorded before, perhaps twenty years ago, by Mary Louise Boehm, a pianist who has made something of a specialty of Beach's music, but this new recording supersedes the older one largely because Feinberg's performance is more assured and brilliant, the sound is crystalline, and the Nashville Symphony's playing is much better than that by the Westphalian Symphony under Siegfried Landau.Another advantage of this issue is that Beach's once-familiar 'Gaelic Symphony' (1896) is coupled with the Concerto. It has tougher competition on CD--a Chandos recording by Neeme Järvi conducting the Detroit Symphony--but this performance is quite as good, and of course Naxos's budget price, as usual, is a definite plus.If anything, the 42-minute, four-movement Gaelic Symphony, making use of Irish tunes (as well as original tunes that Beach wrote in the style of Irish folksongs), is even more tuneful and immediately attractive than the Concerto. The Andante second movement is particularly appealing; its major theme is the kind that immediately sticks in your mind's ear and won't let go (what the Germans call an Ohrwurm, an 'ear worm'). The third movement (Lento con molta espressione) is luscious and deeply melancholic. The symphony ends with a congeries of Irish tunes and dances in a paean of dramatic exultation.I have no hesitation in recommending this CD. It is another recording in Naxos's admired American Classics series which seems to go from glory to glory. Naxos is doing for American classical music what Lyrita, Conifer, Hyperion and Chandos have done for native British music. The ongoing discovery of the depth and value of our American classical heritage continues to thrill me.Scott Morrison"

Naxos and the NSO do it again

Robert L. Estes | Nashville, TN USA | 09/15/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Scott Morrison has already provided the salient details about this wonderful recording. This was arguably the best of last season's NSO concerts, and the recording is even better. TPAC's Jackson Hall seems to be an excellent symphonic recording studio, an interesting contrast to the scattered "dead spots" one must occasionally suffer through as a concertgoer depending on the seat assignment (the symphony will move to a new, allegedly acoustically superior hall in 2006). For those few who might hesitate to purchase a recording by a "second tier" orchestra, I can assure you that the mostly youthful members are graduates of America's best conservatories and university music departments. The core group has been together long enough to establish a cohesive tone with precision which rivals the "name" orchestras when they play their best, as they do here. Bernstein protege Schemerhorn conducts these works with grace and sensitivity - and Feinberg's piano performance is amazing. Highly recommended."