Yankee Doodle Discs. - Review - sound recording reviews

National Review, Nov 22, 1999 by Jay Nordlinger

The New York Philharmonic has released another of its "special editions," this one a boxed set of ten compact discs devoted to American music. It is entitled, plainly enough, An American Celebration, and it includes 49 works by 39 composers, interpreted by 21 conductors. It is not only a survey of one nation's orchestral music, but a record of the life of an orchestra, and a treasury of some of the century's greatest conductors. It also comes with two fat booklets, stuffed with essays, biographies, and interviews, along with photos so unfamiliar and heartwarming that they alone are almost worth the price ($185) of the set.

All in all, one cannot imagine a finer "salute" (as the Philharmonic also calls it) to American music, or at least to American orchestral music. Sedgwick Clark, producer of the set, has acquitted himself with his usual excellence. But the key and barely utterable question is: Does American music deserve it?

We have now set off a powder keg. In music, as in other areas of life, there is affirmative action-in the case of music, most often national affirmative action. Americans, with their traditional insecurity vis-a-vis Europe, are worse than others in this regard. They tend nervously to favor their own; or rather, they feel an obligation to perform and champion those of their countrymen who happen to compose. This is accepted simply as a fact of life, and an unquestionable good. No one has ever objected when a conductor (it is usually a conductor, rather than a singer or instrumentalist) says, "I pledge to search out and advocate American music."

Thus, when Leonard Slatkin was appointed music director of the National Symphony Orchestra several years ago, it was very heavily emphasized that he was an American conductor who went out of his way-way out of it-to showcase American music. That this was a desirable practice and impulse- particularly for an orchestra that bills itself as "National"-went, of course, entirely unquestioned. The merits of the music (or, for that matter, of the conductor) were, at best, secondary. What mattered was nationality, and a peculiar form of nationalism. Even the present director of the New York Philharmonic, the German Kurt Masur, takes care to note, in a letter written for An American Celebration, that the Philharmonic has always felt a "strong responsibility" to the homegrown composer. Masur, inevitably-this was a little insurance-placed contemporary American works on his inaugural program with the Philharmonic, in 1991. (One of them was John Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine, a fun piece, included in the just-issued set.)

The tug of national pride-or of a sense of national duty, or entitlement- is, of course, far from new. In one of his sprightly essays for the set's booklets, the critic Alan Rich cites the case of one George Frederick Bristow, a "violinist, composer, and new-music activist." In 1854 (that early), Bristow fired off an angry letter to the New York Philharmonic Society, which at the time was dominated by Germans. He accused the Society of "a systematized effort for the extinction of American music"! (This despite the fact that the orchestra had by then programmed a concert overture of Bristow's, a piece now lost to time, probably without great injury to our souls.) "Is there a Philharmonic in Germany," he thundered, "for the encouragement of American music?"

Elsewhere in the booklets, however, we learn of a contrary case, that of Edward MacDowell, who understood full well the affirmative-action mentality of some in organized music, and resented it. He once refused to allow a work of his to be included in an all-American program. He wanted his music to be judged solely for itself, performed because it was worthy, or not at all. (This tidbit comes from that stalwart critic of yesteryear, Irving Kolodin. Another of the delights of this package is that it offers a parade of critics and annotators, down through the decades. One suspects, though, that a little Bowdlerizing has gone on: Chances are that Irving Kolodin did not employ the term "African-American.")

Composers, needless to say, have always groused that performers ignore the new and nearby (which is to say, them). In truth, however, to be new and nearby is to have a leg up-is to be able to play on the guilt and ethical presumptions of performers. Some portion of what our orchestras program today is programmed only because it is a) American and b) new. This is a way, goes the thinking, of tending and extending the national heritage. But what is that heritage, exactly? Is it a heritage of greatness, or is it one of mediocrity, propped up by the patriotic, moral, and professional notions of a large segment of the musical establishment? This is a question that the Philharmonic's ten discs can help to answer.

Disc 1 opens with Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, regarded as one of our national anthems. It does not, frankly, wear well. It is a little pompous, a little overblown, with its crashing cymbals and blustering drums. Then there is George Chadwick's Melpomene, a Dramatic Overture. It is dramatic indeed, not to say melodramatic, mostly a series of Romantic outpourings, held together by their dull sameness. The work is included here, one may guess, only because it is a handy example of late- 19th-century American music. Then there is MacDowell's Indian Suite (spiritedly conducted by Leonard Bernstein, who gets the lion's share of the baton time in this set). It is a dated and hokey piece, though not without a certain charm and ingenuity. Then we have a classic-the classic, really-of American Impressionism, The White Peacock by Charles Tomlinson Griffes, in a lovely performance by another composer, Howard Hanson. Following that is Ernest Schelling's Victory Ball, a Fantasy for Orchestra, once a rather big deal in American music, now no more than an historical oddity.