Scottish Chamber Orchestra: Appalachian Spring
Queen’s Hall - 02/11/23
Ryan Bancroft, conductor
The Civil War, in which more Americans died than in any other conflict, stretches its influence far into the 20th century. In tonight’s Scottish Chamber Orchestra concert, both works by US composers, Ives’ ‘Three Places in New England’ (1912-14), and Copland’s 1944 ballet ‘Appalachian Spring’ relate to 19th century America during and after the Civil War. US conductor, Ryan Bancroft, relatively recently a BBC Young Artist, is already Principal Conductor of the National Orchestra of Wales, and the Swedish National Orchestra. He conducts these works with much insight, and also gives a dynamic reading to the World Premiere of Errollyn Wallen’s ‘Three Dances’, as exuberant a piece of new music that any audience would wish to hear.
Charles Ives, who led a life of great respectability working in insurance, spent his spare time writing experimental music, startling for the period, and, as Max Mandel, principal viola, suggests in his introduction, as timeless today as it was then. The first movement of ‘Three Places in New England,’ commemorates the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry (the subject of the 1989 film ‘Glory’) an African American Union regiment which lost over a hundred men in battle in 1863. Ives, born in 1874, less than 10 years after the Civil War ended, knew the story from the monument by sculptor Augustus Sant-Gaudens on Boston Common. The halting march is challenging to listen to, as through the deliberately hazy chords, solo wind instruments start, but never complete, phrases from spirituals, providing perhaps a sense of hope which remains unrealised as the final crashing chords cut the movement short. Ives prefaced his score with his own poem which spoke of “Faces of Souls” marching towards freedom.
Ives’ father had been a bandmaster in the Civil War, and his musical taste, (according to music critic Alex Ross) extended to forms of sound experiments: “He once marched two bands past each other, for the simple joy of hearing them in cacophonous simultaneity.” The second movement is ‘Putnam’s Camp’ an important site in the War of Independence, but his father’s military band career is also in his mind. The raucous orchestra plays ‘Yankee Doodle,’ with snare drums and cymbals, the theme later taken up by a jazzy piano. The music slows with a lyrical string section, and clarinet and bassoon play an off-beat melody. Suddenly – and this is as much fun to see as to hear - the orchestra divides into two bands – the first violins and violas on the left of the stage add the horns, flute and piccolo behind them, while the band on the right have second violins, cellos , basses plus the winds and brass behind them. I’m reasonably sure that one band plays ‘The British Grenadiers,’ but can’t vouch for the other!
‘The Housatonic at Stockbridge’, the shorter third movement is a lyrical contrast, to the first two and celebrates Ives’ memory of a walk along the meadows beside the Housatonic River during his honeymoon. A slow horn melody picked up by bassoons leads into a legato string section. The horn and cor anglais play snatches of hymns heard from afar in this rural idyll until a sudden raucous intervention by brass and timpani. Is this an expression of bliss, as David Kettle suggests in the programme notes? Like much in Ives the sounds are compelling, but the meaning is ambiguous.
Bancroft’s conducting of this tricky score is exemplary, with the solo voices of the winds given as much care and attention as the full-blown military bands. Errollyn Wallen chose him as the conductor for her new piece ‘Dances for Orchestra,’ a joint commission by the SCO, the Irish Chamber Orchestra and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, because he has a background in dance. The work, given its world premiere tonight is dedicated to “two dear friends, Su-a Lee and Hamish Napier, celebrating their marriage”. Su-a Lee is not onstage playing cello but the couple are in the audience.
The work is an extravaganza of dance, exploring varieties from different historical periods and cultures. It’s fair to say that any musicians who enjoy playing in different musical styles have their chance tonight. Nikita Naumov and Jamie Kenny on double bass show their mastery of jazz bow-fiddle technique, (roll over Jack Lemmon), there’s a touch of James Galway in Andre Cebrian’s Irish jig, while the brass section, Peter Franks and Brian McGinley on trumpet and trombonists, Duncan Wilson and Nigel Cox show off their bluesy notes, with and without mutes. It’s an immediately accessible and likeable work, though also paying homage to the roots of dance music whether in formal baroque style or in folk dances. A mash-up of swing and jigs brings the piece to a rousing close. Errollyn Wallen is brought up from the audience for two bows before the tumultuous applause finishes.
Errollyn Wallen
“It’s good to know that the ‘father of American music’ was a gay socialist” said Max Mandel of Aaron Copland. The New York composer, educated in Paris by Natalie Boulanger, was a dedicated modernist in his youth, but deliberately turned towards music which would be understandable by everyone. The choreographer, Martha Graham, asked him to write the score for a ballet telling a simple story of a wedding in rural Pennsylvania. The work, called ‘Ballet for Martha’ almost until opening night, was eventually named ‘Appalachian Spring’ from a poem by Hart Crane. (This spring was a source of water, and Copland was later embarrassed when people remarked on how well his music captured Appalachia in springtime). Nevertheless the ballet and its score, originally for thirteen instruments, were popular from its 1944 opening, the nineteenth century country setting, its evocative church music and community dances, all chiming with a late-wartime sense of optimism.
Tonight we have the ballet score, re-orchestrated for full orchestra, in eight movements played without a break. Much of the music is joyous and spring-like – in both senses of the word – and beginning with the liquid rising notes in the first section, it is a perfect showcase for the SCO’s world-class woodwind and brass players. The strings, with Colin Scobie from the Maxwell Quartet as guest leader, provide a shimmering gentle backdrop in the first section but come into their own in the hoe-down.
The Shaker hymn, ‘Simple Gifts’ emerges as a key component of the score, a straightforward expression of the united rural community in the ballet, and now an immediately recognisable tune. It probably wasn’t so for the work’s first audience - Copland has been credited with popularising the hymn, then known mainly to Shaker communities. He later found out that there were no Shakers in Pennsylvania (the Wikipedia entry lets him off the hook, pointing out that there were Shakers in the Massachusetts tip of the Appalachians!) In Britain we learned the melody even later though Sydney Carter’s 1964 ‘Lord of the Dance.’ From its first rendition as a joyful outburst from full orchestra through to its final reprise with sonorous brass, it dominates the second half of the work. It is interrupted by and contrasted with the Civil War music of the sixth and seventh sections where in the ballet the Preacher warns the husband that he may have to fight in the war. The mood darkens, and a trumpet call and loud jagged music suggests the dangers in battles to be fought. As hope rises again, Copland said that the final notes should be “like a prayer”.
Music from marching bands of the past, square dances from a ballet, and Errollyn Wallen’s terpsichorean magic from the baroque through Irish jigs to imaginary future jiving, Ryan Bancroft has given much foot-tapping pleasure in tonight’s concert. He has a great rapport with the orchestra, and we look forward to a return visit.
Cover photo: Ben Ealovega
