Neglected music (1)

In my review of the April 12 Richmond Festival of Music performance of Amy Beach’s Theme and Variations, Op. 80, for flute and string quartet, I mentioned an eventual post on compositions whose neglect defies rational explanation.

No fair teasing if you aren’t prepared to deliver.

Here’s a start at an occasional series on pieces that deserve much more exposure than they receive, with my best guesses as to why they are neglected, plus a recommended recording.

Bear in mind that I’m writing from the east coast of the United States, a pretty cosmopolitan part of the classical-music world but one whose musical diet differs from that of other places. Some pieces that I call "neglected" may be standard repertory where you live.

I’ll begin with five orchestral pieces:

* Ralph Vaughan Williams: "Job: a Masque for Dancing"

Based on William Blake’s "Illustrations of the Book of Job," composed in the late 1920s, introduced as a concert work in 1930 and first staged with dancers a year later, "Job" is rated by many Vaughan Williams aficionados as his greatest orchestral score. While much of the music is in the composer’s familiar pastoral vein, several dramatic sequences anticipate the turbulence and more advanced harmonic language of the Fourth Symphony (1935).

"Job" is scored for a large orchestra with a prominent part for pipe organ, which makes performances impractical in many concert halls. Revivals of the piece by dance troupes have been rare. More likely reasons for its neglect are the composer’s nationality – English music is chronically underplayed outside Britain – and that the musical style of "Job" is conservative by the standards of better-known works of the time (e.g., Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Stravinsky’s "Symphony of Psalms," Berg’s "Three Pieces for Orchestra").

Recording: English Northern Philharmonia/David Lloyd-Jones (Naxos 8.553955).

* Joaquin Rodrigo: "Concierto in modo galante" for cello and orchestra

Introduced in 1949, this is one of the loveliest examples of modern orchestrations in antique style. The piece is a late example of the genre, written three decades after Stravinsky’s "Pulcinella" and the first of Respighi’s "Ancient Airs and Dances" suites. Rodrigo’s only cello concerto, it predates his best-known antiquing job, "Fantasia para un gentilhombre," the 1954 guitar concerto based on music of Gaspar Sanz, popularized by Andrés Segovia.

Rodrigo’s "Concierto de Aranjuez" is the default guitar concerto in orchestral programming ("Fantasia para un gentilhombre," its usual disc-mate, runs a very distant second), and all other music by this long-lived, versatile and prolific Spanish composer is neglected. No celebrity cellist has recorded or regularly performed this piece. "Concierto in modo galante" sounds tame alongside some works of its time (Stravinsky’s "Orpheus," Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra, Boulez’s "Livre pour cordes"), but not especially retrograde alongside some others (Richard Strauss’ "Four Last Songs," Copland’s "Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson").

Recording: Asier Polo (cello), Castille and Leon Symphony/Max Bragado-Darman (Naxos 8.555840).

* Bohuslav Martinů: Symphony No. 3

Martinů’s Third Symphony, written in the summer of 1944 and introduced by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony in October 1945, is the most concise and arguably the most intense of the Czech composer’s first four symphonies, all produced in the United States during World War II, all reflecting an exiled European’s anxiety over the war. Martinů was active in the modernist scene in 1920s Paris; you can hear echoes of that time and place in his harmonic language and wind writing, but pre-war Parisian insouciance is scarce in this austere, explosive work. Dvořák is an obvious reference for any Czech symphonist – especially one working in America – but the symphonic model that Martinů cited for his Third was Beethoven’s Third, the "Eroica."

Martinů’s music generally is underexposed outside his Czech homeland. The only one of his symphonies played with any frequency is his Sixth and last, the “Fantasies symphoniques,” written for Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony and introduced by them in January 1955. The composer’s modernized diatonic language is hardly avant-garde but sounds too rarified to rate as conservative. While it lacks the sophistication of the contemporaneous Concerto for Orchestra by Bartók and "Symphony in Three Movements" by Stravinsky, Martinů’s Third stands up to comparison with the most popular World War II-vintage symphony, Prokofiev’s Fifth.

Recording: Bamberg Symphony/Neeme Järvi (BIS 363).

* Max Bruch: Serenade in A minor for violin and orchestra

Alongside Bruch’s popular Violin Concerto in G minor, "Scottish Fantasy" for violin and orchestra and "Kol Nidrei" for cello and orchestra, the Serenade, introduced in 1900, is a mellow postscript. It is couched in traditional Germanic late-romantic style and showcases the violin’s lyrical voice without much opportunity for virtuosic display.

Most composers rated as "derivative" or "imitative" (of Mendelssohn and Brahms, in Bruch’s case) are known, if at all, for one or a handful of works. Bruch is represented by three and that seems to be deemed a generous quota. Too bad, for the Serenade is at least the equal of the G minor Concerto and superior to the "Scottish Fantasy," albeit much longer than either. Salvatore Accardo was the only major violinist to take up this piece, for 1970s recordings of all of Bruch’s works for violin and orchestra.

Recording: Salvatore Accardo (violin), Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra/Kurt Masur (Philips 462 167).

* William Grant Still: Symphony No. 2 in G minor ("Song of a New Race")

Still was the pioneer African-American symphonist and is customarily (predictably?) represented in the orchestral repertory by his First ("Afro-American") Symphony of 1930. His Second Symphony, introduced by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1937, is less "folkish" in style, more abstract in content. Still got his start as a professional musician working with W.C. Handy, the master of blues and early jazz; and the Second Symphony, unlike the First, reflects the composer’s fluency in jazz.

Chalk up this symphony’s neglect to lack of curiosity on the part of orchestra programmers, and perhaps a preference for the work of living black composers. The practice of cramming most performances of art-music by African-American composers into a "ghetto," from Jan. 15 (birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.) through February (Black History Month), is surely another factor.

Recording: Detroit Symphony/Neeme Järvi (Chandos 9226).