Copland - Canticle of Freedom
Barber - Agnus Dei (Adagio)
Copland - Appalachian Spring
Copland - Fanfare for the Common Man
Gershwin - Cuban Overture
Bernstein - Chichester Psalms

Review

Programme

Soloists

Poster

Colosseum

American mixture

A festival of American Music was the theme for Watford Philharmonic's concert last week.  The excellent programme notes by Roddy Williams pointed out that the works were by four composers, three of whom were soms of Jewish immigrants from Russia, the exception being Samuel Barber.

The choir was heard to advantage in the acoustically superior Colosseum
From: Watford Observer, Jane Parr, ref Y243409

The choir and orchestra, conducted by Stuart Dunlop with Leader Rebecca Boyle, began with Copland's Canticle of Freedom, based on a medieval Scottish epic poem The Bruce by John Barbour.  This provided a stimulating opening with laudable sentiments.

Agnus Dei by Samuel Barber, better known as the orchestral version as Adagio for Strings, followed.  This was a moving piece and the beautiful tone of the unaccompanied choir was heard to advantage in the acoustically superior Colosseum.

The first half concluded with Copland's Appalachian Spring.  The deceptive score of seemingly simple melodies must have been fiendishly difficult to play with its complicated sections.  Folk music, birdsong and hoedown could be distinguished as well as the familiar Lord Of The Dance in this work, originally written for a ballet company in 1944.  It relates the pioneering days when a newly-married farmer and his wife are having a house-warming party and the quiet end reflects the couple serenely settled in their new home.

The orchestra had been augmented by a large body of percussion and additional brass who were all heard in Fanfare for the Common Man by Copland, the startling opening making us all sit up and take notice.

George Gershwin, as I may have said before, is not a personal favourite and his Cuban Overture has done nothing to change my opinion.  Whether it was the music of performance, this was, apart from the rhythmic percussion when they were all obviously enjoying themselves, nothing byt a raucous noise.  Sorry.

Chichester Psalms by Leonard Bernstein, sung in Hebrew, saw the choir excel themselves with soloist, counter-tenor James Huw Jeffries.  This piece features extracts from six Psalms and was written for Chichester Cathedral in 1966.

This was an adventurous programme and although I was not totally enamoured it was, nevertheless, never less than interesting and Watford Philharmonic are to be admired for staging something different.

by Wendy Keeling Taylor

AARON COPLAND (1900 - 1900)

Canticle of Freedom 

This work was commissioned in 1955 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the dedication of a newly built auditorium and the first performance was given by the Institute's own chorus and orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.  The text is by the medieval Scottish poet John Barbour (1326? - 1395) with the language modernised.  It comes from his patriotic epic "The Bruce".  Copland revised the work in 1967, somewhat shortening the orchestral introduction.

SAMUEL BARBER (1910 - 1981)

Agnus Dei

Although the greater part of Barber's output consists of songs this piece did not start live as vocal music, but as part of a string quartet that he wrote in 1936.  The slow movement was arranged for orchestra as the "Adagio for Strings".  It was frequently used in America during the war years, was played at the death of President Roosevelt and later featured as the theme music for the Vietnam war film "The Deer Hunter".  In 1967 Barber decided to transcribe it for chorus using the words of the "Agnus Dei".

AARON COPLAND

Appalachian Spring

It was for his ballet music and other lighter pieces that Copland first became well-known.  "Appalachian Spring" was originally written in 1944 as a ballet for the Martha Graham company.  It was scored at first for just 13 instruments; however, in making a suite from the music, Copland rescored it for full orchestra.

The setting of the ballet is the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania in the pioneering days where a newly-married farmer and his wife are having a house-warming party.  The guests include an old neighbour, a revivalist preacher and some of his followers and there is much dancing (it is a ballet after all).  One of the later sections uses an old Shaker tune ("Simple Gifts") better known nowadays to the words provided by Andrew Carter.  In the ballet this accompanies 'scenes of daily activity for the bride and her farmer husband'.  The quiet ending shows us the couple serenely settled in their new home.

AARON COPLAND

Fanfare for the Common Man

In 1942 the composer and conductor Eugene Goossens asked eighteen composers to contribute patriotic fanfares for one of his concerts with the Cincinatti Symphony Orchestra.  Ten of them, this one included, were for brass and percussion alone and were subsequently published.  The title is Copland's and reflects his left-wing sympathies (which got him into some trouble in the McCarthyite era).

GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898 - 1937)

Cuban Overture

George Gershwin plunged into the world of popular music after leaving school at the age of 15.  By day he played the piano 'plugging' publishers' songs, by night he played in cafes; but he also studied theory, harmony and composition and frequented classical concerts.  He even at one stage applied to Schonberg for lessons, but they settled for playing tennis together and painting each other's portraits.  Consequently the stream of successful song 'hits' and musicals was interspersed with more serious compositions.  The Cuban Overture was written in 1932 after a holiday in Havana.  Its use of Latin-American rhythms and local percussion instruments helped to introduce these into the New York jazz scene.  It also falls into three sections, the first and last lively and rhythmic, the middle one quieter and more reflective.

LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918 - 1980)

Chichester Psalms

In 1965 Bernstein, who was taking a sabbatical from his conducting work, was commissioned to write a work for England's Southern Cathedrals' Festival to be given next year in Chichester by the choirs of Chichester, Salisbury and Winchester.  For reasons of space, balance and acoustics the composition of the orchestra was specified - strings, brass and percussion only.

Bernstein decided to set the psalms he had chosen in the original Hebrew and discarded the severe 12-tone style with which he had been experimenting in favour of something more popular.  He had been told that a hint of "West Side Story" would be quite acceptable and he did in fact use music from a discarded portion of it and from another, aborted, musical.

Later he wrote of it - in verse:-

A simple and modest affair,
Tonal and tuneful and somewhat square,
Certain to sicken a stout John Cager
With its tonics and triads in E flat major.
But there it stands - the result of my pondering, 
Two long months of avant-garde wandering - 
My youngest child, old fashioned and sweet.
And he stands on his own two tonal feet.

The first performance was a great success in spite of minimal orchestral rehearsal and the work quickly established itself as his most popular choral composition.

Born in Catnerbury, James Huw Jeffries read music at Magdalen College, Oxford, furthering his vocal studies at the Royal College of Music, London, where he was awarded the Henry Blower Prize, and at the Britten-Pears School.  A former Recommended Artist of the National Federation of Music Societies, he was selected for the Koninlijke Christelijke Zangersbond for the 1996 Ema Spoorenberf Solistenpresentatie in The Netherlands and made his London solo debut in Israel in Egypt at St John's, Smith Square.

James Huw Jeffries' operatic engagements include Oberon A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Theater Magdeburg, Merione Telemaco for the English Bach Festival Trust in London and Athens, Nireno Giulio Cesare for the Royal Danish Opera, Tolomeo Giulio Cesare at the Bergen Festival, Bertarido Rodelinda for the Sudostbayerisches Stadtetheater, Andronico Tamerlano at the Aldeburgh Festival, Caterpillar / Caspar in the world premiere of Alexander Knaifel's Alice in Wonderland at the Netherlands Opera, Nerone L'Incoronazione di Poppea for the Cavalli Baroque Ensemble, The Spirit Dido and Aeneas for the English Bach Festival and The Countertenor in Heiner Goebbels' SCHLIEMANN Scafffolding for diplous Eros at The Thesemn, Athens.  He also covered Bishop Baldwin Gawain and Athamas Semele for the Royal Opera and Buggen The Fairy Queen for English National Opera.

Concert engagements have taken him throughout the UK and also to Europe and North America.  Singing under conductors such as Martyn Brabbins, Fabian Dobler, Simon Ible, Pieter Jan Leusink, Andrew Parrott, Penelope Rapson, Wolfgang Seeliger and Eberhard Volk, his concert appearances have included performances with the Darmstadt Hopfkapelle, Fiori Musicali, the Magdeburg Philharmonic, the Mainz Chamber Orchestra, the National Chamber Orchestra of Wales, the New Hamilton Orchestra, Canada, the Netherlands Bach Collegium, the Northern Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Golden Age, the Orchestra of St Cecelia, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Scottish Opera Orchestra, the Taverner Players and the Ten Tors Orchestra.  He was Mephistopheles in the London premiere of Schnittke's Faust and has also sung at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, the Brighton, Birmingham Early Music, Edinburgh, Leith Hill and St Ceciliatide Festivals, the Barbican Hall the Queen Elizabeth Hall, St James's, Piccadilly, St John's, Smith Square, the Fairfield Halls, Croydon, the Snape Maltings and the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea.

[Photo: Andres Landino]