Search - Nicolas Flagello, David Amos, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava) :: Flagello: Symphony 1 / Sea Cliffs

Carrying the banner

Arnold Rosner | Bklyn, NY | 05/11/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Who carries the Puccini-Rachmaninoff banner in the mid 20th century? I do not refer to neo-romanticism, where high-density expression may depend on modal, non-tonal or ethnic language (where I, as a composer, may be counted) or retro-romanticism, which prefers a child's-play watered-down style, but to the true late Romantic who proudly uses the standard orchestra, the tonal system, sonata and variation forms,- but as importantly, "steps out" in more modern rhythmic, contrapuntal and harmonic complexity when called for. If there is a true late-Romantic writing after 1950, perhaps that precarious distinction belongs to Nicolas Flagello (1928-1994). Here is true heart-on-sleeve emotional music, throbbing and crying out, in a personalized tonal and formally traditional language. Some works SOUND like Rachmaninoff, though naturally, comfortable and warmly. In later, darker works, involved structure and counterpoint bring about a density which is clearly modern. Few composers seek climaxes as intense as Flagellos; he provides a virtual textbook thereupon. For example, consider a steady crescendo peaking with nowhere to go, and the composer suddenly drops to mezzo-piano, with agogic hesitation and concurrent interesting harmonic turn,- only to rebuild from there even further than before. This is hardly unique, but Flagello uses it frequently and with great skill.The earliest work here presented is Theme, Variations and Fugue. Shortly following study with Giannini and Pizzetti, the piece is, to these ears, a student work, albeit of promise. The pitfall in writing variations is: 1. can the listener identify the "double-bars" as one variation ends and the next begins and 2. Do the first few bars of a variation largely pre-figure its continuation? In the 18th century such dryness may have been accepted, but it was surpassed earlier by Luis Milan or Henry Purcell, and recently by Peter Mennin in Symphony No. 7 among others. The Flagello work generally does not succeed, despite some fine moments, here tender, here exciting. A further flaw is that the main theme is perhaps too tonal, begining with 5-3-1-6 in a minor key; the opening arpeggio becomes tiresome. The ending uses blazing brass triads with chiming percussion to great effect though coming somewhat "out of nowhere."For brevity, the two short works included on the CD will not be discussed here.The feature here is Symphony No. 1 written in the 60s. The booklet notes claim the Brahms 4th as structural model, but I find this tangential and distracting. Indeed the 5-3-1-6 opening of the earlier Flagello work matches the beginning of the Brahms,- but in Symphony No. 1, both idiom and structure suggest other ancestry. Strangely, Flagello's "A" and "B" sonata form themes are very similar,- as was characteristic of Haydn. More deeply, what IS the sound of mature Flagello? Melodic statements begin boldly but clearly,- pitches and rhythms are memorable and even singable,- for the first phrase. But where the second answering phrase should be, we find a headlong, careening rush, wider range,- scrambling rhythms, volcanic scoring. We lose our ability to retain "tunes"; we may be irritated by gesturing,- but at its best, this method achieves an edgy feeling of desperation and even panic. While often sustained, these segments often end in short martellato moments,- reinforced with suspended cymbal or drum punctuations. To me, the true ancestor, especially first-movement-to-first-movement, of this work is the Tchaikovsky 4th symphony! There a 9/8 rhythm almost falls over itself en route to the abyss with melodic bravura and fussy brassy chordal proclamations. The Russian's melodic charm usually "keeps the lid on", but not here. I will speak more strongly. I do not suggest Flagello is in the shadow of Tchaikovsky, but rather than he has SUCCEEDED in writing the movement Tchaikovsky was TRYING to write in 1877.As expected, Flagello provides a whopping climax,at 5:42, preceded by an irregular rhythmic motor using pianoforte. The aftershock at 6:20 connects development to recapitulation on a true dominant-tonic cadence, showing Flagello's heart is still tonal; I personally am dissappointed, but that is my modal-prejudice. The slow movement has several brooding solos, but that hardly prevents equally climactic writing and rhythmic/contrapuntal roaming. The scherzo finally gives us a very periodic and repeated melody. It nevertheless has daemonic character and gets under our skin. Harmony is dissonant; rhythm regular and obsessive. He again shows us the whole bag of climactic apparatus,- driving orchestral rhythms supporting unison melodic horns, blazing triadic brass with bell/chime trimming and, finally,- a bone-chilling tight cluster dissonance for strings, set off with a side drum four-note flam. All this sets the stage for a big finale, and Flagello offers a showcase of variational technique. He begins with chaconne,- continues to traditional variants, culminating in fugue, and the conclusion is another chiming epiphany. Of course, one is tempted to evaluate the movement in the symphony but also as against the early variation work discussed above. The theme is more opaque; orchestral and structural control are fully developed. The content is emotionally rich; form is thorough and mature. Yet I do not feel form and content enforce one another. I find myself (and I presume Flagello himself) lost in the labyrinth of his own construction. This does not preclude enjoying some very provocative and at times cathartic music, and if the finale is not thoroughly equal to the task, the symphony as a whole is still a major success. By now collectors are well aware that recordings such as this one are often made by orchestras who have never seen or heard the works before and likely never will again. 20 minutes of music are dispatched in three hours, and editing takes over. This is often accomplished by excellent yet ecomonical European ensembles. Some middle-ground American orchestras participate,- Nashville on the Naxos series,- Altoona and Owensboro in a recent CD of my compositions. This may afford the possibility that a concert performance may be scheduled which may greatly personalize the parts for the orchestral personnel.In these foreign versions, are there moments where a player (often on woodwind) has a solo and simply does not realize its importance? Are there moments where string intonation gets "raw"? Yes, of course,- but the Slovak orchestra under David Amos's impassioned and experienced baton, keeps any such flaws to a minimum and generally delivers emotional and convincing renditions of these works.Arnold Rosner"

A Bold, Romantic Statement

Thomas F. Bertonneau | Oswego, NY United States | 10/14/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I agree with Arnold Rosner (himself a fine composer) and Scott Morrison. This is a disc to be treasured. Nicolas Flagello (1928 - 1994) belonged to the New York and Northeast school of Italian-American composers of the mid-century, along with Walter Piston, Peter Mennin, Paul Creston, Vincent Persichetti, Vittorio Giannini, and others. Characteristics of the group are an adherence to Nineteenth Century aesthetic canons, an interest in melody as the supreme feature of musical composition, and a determination to involve audiences immediately in the drama of the score. Listeners know Flagello less well than the others, although in recent years his music has begun to find documentation on CD. A conspicuous example is a recording, on Koch, of his choral-orchestral tribute to Martin Luther King; another is a volume of concerted works, for violin and piano with orchestra, initially on Vox and later on Artek. The Naxos "American Classics" series would not inevitably have included Flagello, but it does so now appropriately, especially having previously represented Piston and Creston in the same series. Flagello wrote in a style more Romantic than either Piston (a neo-classicist) or Creston (Romantic in impulse but distinctively modern in his articulation). Flagello's Symphony No. 1 (the first of two), composed between 1964 and 1968, owes a professed debt to Brahms, although no one would mistake its language for the Teutonic, as it cleaves to a plainly American idiom. Yet the symphony belongs to the Nineteenth Century in its gestures, especially in the Finale, which Flagello casts in the form of a "Ciaconna" (Chaconne - or Passacaglia), in an obvious homage to the last movement of Brahms' Symphony No. 4. The annotator of the CD, Walter Simmons, observes that Flagello, unlike the more recent appropriators of Nineteenth-Century musical techniques, employs the venerable vocabulary without irony. Simmons is probably thinking of George Rochberg or John Adams. Their Romanticism is "sentimental," in Schiller's sense, because it is a conscious recreation of something that no longer possesses spontaneous existence; Flagello's Romanticism is "naïve," again in Schiller's sense, because it is spontaneous and without deliberation. Flagello is, in other words, the real thing. The Symphony is a big, muscular work, whose First Movement (Allegro Molto) plunges into its subject matter without preamble: there is a first group of angular, anxious-sounding themes and second group of rather more lyrical materials. It all gets submitted to a complicated development starting immediately when it is exposed. The Second Movement (Andante Lento) manages to be lyrical and steely at the same time; the Third Movement (Scherzo) offers some relief in the dramatic span of the symphony. Then comes the remarkable theme-and-variations of the concluding Passacaglia, which, like its model in Brahms' last symphony, screws up the tension with every succeeding variation until the climax comes rattling in like a cataclysm. It is powerful stuff - first performed in the year of its completion, 1968, and more or less consigned to the music library ever since. What a pity! The two short pieces are diverting. The "Theme and Variations," like the Symphony, is a major work, concluding with a fugue of considerable amplitude and power. Conductor David Amos has made a career as a free-lance orchestra director specializing in out-of-the-way repertory. He has conducted the music, among others, of Ernest Bloch, Arnold Rosner, Norman dello Joio, and Alan Hovhaness. All of these composers have something in common: an uncommon gift for melody and dramatic presentation that is both traditional in its musical appeal and modern in its emotional tone. His advocacy of Flagello is of a piece with his interest in those others. Recommended."

A Conservative American Composer Getting More Attention

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 05/01/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I'd been hearing the name of Nicolas Flagello for years, but had never run across any of his music until this disc; I gather that there has been a fair amount of it recorded prior to this, but I'm fairly certain this is the first recording of the two big pieces here, the First Symphony and the Theme, Variations and Fugue. Nicolas Flagello (1928-1994) was born in New York into a musical family; his brother, Ezio Flagello, was an outstanding basso at the Met for many years. A child prodigy, he was composing and playing the piano publicly before the age of ten. He studied from an early age with another Italian-American musician, Vittorio Giannini (composer of "The Taming of the Shrew" - a delightful comic opera), who also had a singer in the family: his sister Dusolina Giannini was a reigning soprano at the Met in the 20s and 30s. Giannini's compositional style was fairly conservative, and Flagello's generally is as well. His music seems to be well-constructed on classical principles and he has a striking lyrical gift.The two shorter sweetly melodious pieces on this CD, "Sea Cliffs," and "Intermezzo from 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin'," illustrate that latter ability. They are, simply, quite lovely. The two larger pieces on this disc, "Symphony No. 1," (1964-68) and "Theme, Variations, and Fugue" (1956) are necessarily more varied and more abstract. The Symphony is a 37-minute four movement, tightly constructed work based on an idea expressed at the outset, a descending three-note motto which can be heard in many different guises in all four movements. The first three movements seem to be conveying a feeling of mystery, agitation, brooding, foreboding. The harmonies are more advanced that those in the other three works; there are tritones and secundal harmonies abounding, giving a somewhat histrionic edge to the sound. The second movement, a Scherzo, has some diatonic relief in a short trio section, but otherwise the mood up until the final movement is dramatic and unsettling. The fourth movement, labeled 'Ciaccona: Maestoso andante,' is a large set of variations on a ground bass whose inspiration surely was the last movement of the Brahms Fourth Symphony - interestingly this is the second such movement I've heard in the past couple of weeks, the other being the "Symphonic Variations" of William Wallace, recorded recently on an Albany CD - and late in the twenty-six variations there is an extended lyrical section with harp figurations and a lovely oboe solo leading to a highly contrapuntal conclusion with resounding brass and percussion. A powerful piece, and in more advanced harmonies than the others recorded here."Theme, Variations, and Fugue" is a set of nine variations based on a descending minor triad which sometimes acts as accompaniment to a lyrical stepwise theme. The following variations outline various emotional states - exuberance, whimsy, melancholy, agitation, diffidence - and lead to an attractive fugue on a insouciantly perky theme that eventually broadens into a more expansive section then joined by the original triadic motto in combination with the fugue tune and brought to a majestic finish with percussion, brass and organ adding to the "joyful noise."The performances by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, led by American music specialist, David Amos, are all one could ask for. Recorded sound is slightly congested in the symphony but is clear and true in the other pieces. I continue to be thrilled with Naxos's American Classics series. They are performing a mitzvah by bringing us so much music that otherwise we would never hear in live concerts or encounter on CD. Thank you, Naxos!Scott Morrison"