Piston: Symphonies Nos. 5, 7, 8

Walter Piston is an often overlooked American composer. Recordings of his symphonies aren't exactly lying around everywhere or being recorded anywhere to speak of. Yet he was a major force in American contemporary music. He initially trained as a draftsman before turning to music in which his credentials are noteworthy. After graduating from Harvard, he studied composition with Dukas and Boulanger in Paris. He returned to Harvard where he became a legend in musical theory. I first became familiar with him when I used his textbook Harmony when I studied theory in high school with a very fine teacher at the Baptist Seminary School of Church Music in Louisville. (By the way, Symphony 7 was recorded at the Seminary in 1974.) Piston wrote in a tonal style and gave us eight symphonies, three of which are on the CD under review. Robert Whitney (No. 5) and Jorge Mester (Nos. 7 and 8) conduct the Louisville Orchestra on a reissue of their First Edition Series on Albany Records.The symphonies are not insignificant landmarks in 20th century music and are all tonal and therefore readily accessible until Symphony No. 8. The writing is extremely interesting, the orchestration very fine, the performances committed and convincing, the orchestral sound superb, and the soundstage width and depth excellent with superb center fill. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -For those interested, detailed comments regarding each symphony follow.Symphony 5 is in three movements. The 1st movement begins slowly and pastorally before increasing tension marks a tempo change to Allegro. Moderate tension characterizes the remainder of the movement. The 2nd movement Adagio is not really memorable except for its rather melancholic mood. The 3rd movement is a lively affair with upbeat mood. This is modern music, so no recognizable or lovely melody really exists except in the mind of the composer. Still the composition maintains interest. The finale has a big finish, something some see as lacking in Piston's symphonies. The writing is quite interesting, and Piston demonstrates excellent orchestration skills.Symphony 7 has some atonal moments introduced in the 1st movement which has varying moods but mostly agitated. Piston creates a tension that pervades the movement with only momentary periods of respite, one of which provides the symphony's conclusion. The writing is far more interesting than that of Symphony 5. The 2nd movement is plaintive, almost to the point of despair, but strangely beautiful and moving. The 2nd movement also dies a quiet death like the 1st. The 3rd movement explodes onto its transient agitated youth. There are a few attempts at calm that fail, and agitation resumes but is never frenzied. The movement concludes with a series of simple chords.Symphony 8. The 1st movement begins with basses and expands to include higher strings, then additional instruments join in. In his final symphony, Piston clearly does not intend to make it as easy for the listener as he did in previous symphonies. In the less conventionally tonal of modern music, I have found that just listening without expectation is often helpful. Rather than trying to analyze, I just absorb. That approach seems to work for Piston's Eighth. This music speaks on a different level, and the effect is strangely pleasant. Piston seems to be emptying the reservoir of effects and devices here, experimenting as he goes, it seems. The movement ends with a few strings. I enjoyed it. The 2nd movement begins darkly and progresses to conversations between instrument sections, especially strings. The music takes on a fugue-like character. Again, absorbing rather than analytically listening evokes shifting feelings. Brass choir makes comments as the music crescendos briefly, only to resolve to small instrument groupings that converse with one another. A flute makes intermittent statements. Basses contribute as the movement ends. The final movement lets it all out. This is bold music, intense and driving much of the time with tutti punctuation. Harp joins in briefly, then gives way to strings, then to woodwinds, then to brass. Intensity brings crescendoing forces to a simple set of chords.

It was just really a super product. I don't know what else to say except that it's good music and deserves to be bought and listened to... so I did.

Walter Piston needs no advocacy. He is recognized as one of the American masters and one of the country's major 20th Century symphonists, with an output of eight such compositions written between 1937 and 1965 - yet, given his reputation, he is certainly not over-represented in the recorded catalog: by my count, only #2, 3, 4 and 6 have had more than one recording (a broadcast recording of the 7th was also released on a 12-CD Philadelphia Orchestra's Centennial Collection), and among these, the original recordings of # 3 (by Howard Hanson on Mercury) hasn't been reissued on CD, # 4 by Ormandy on Albany is now out-of-print and sells at cut-throat prices on the secondary market, and #6 by Munch and the BSO has just been reissued by the Haydn House label, directly dubbed from the LP (in what I read are excellent transfers nonetheless).Piston was also possibly Louisville's favorite composer, and the recordings of his works by the orchestra would probably fill nearly three thick CDs. The present one was the first issued by Albany in the late 1980s in a batch of ten devoted to reissues of the Louisville catalog. It collated the contents of one and a half Louisville First Edition Recordings LP : L 653 had the 5th Symphony conducted by Robert Whitney, recorded in 1965 (date not provided in the liner notes), which came with William Kraft's Concerto Grosso, and LS 746 had the two others, conducted by Mester in 1974 and 1975. With the addition of the composer's Serenata, the same material was subsequently reissued in 2003 on the First Edition Recordings label of the Santa Fe Music Group, which had acquired the Louisville back catalog ( Walter Piston: Serenata; Symphonies 5, 7 & 8 ). But with 65:50 of music, the Albany release was already an excellent offer. As for the other Louisville recordings of Piston's music, his ballet "The Incredible Flutist" was reissued on Albany TROY 016 with Hershey Kay's Cakewalk Ballet after piano pieces of Gottschalk ( Two American Ballets ) and the 1st Symphony on TROY 044 with Kurka's Good Soldier Schweik-suite and Menin's Cello Concerto (see my review of  Kurka/Mennin/Piston: Orchestral Works ). Still unreissued are the Viola Concerto (Lou 633) and the Ricercare (LS 789 ).How one reacts to Piston's music is of course a matter of taste. He may not be my favorite among the great 20th Century American symphonists - I prefer the motorism of Mennin's late symphonies (starting with the 7th from 1963), the "eventfullness" in Schuman's 3rd or again his late symphonies (8th though 10th, composed between 1962 and 1975), the Schoenbergian complexity of Sessions' and Riegger's. Still, I like the dramatic and often dissonant vigor of Piston's first movement allegros in Symphony # 5 & 7 (at times Hindemith comes to mind in the 7th - a Pulitzer prize winner in 1963 by the way, and Piston's second after the one awarded to his 3rd Symphony in 1948) and above all I am grateful to the composer for avoiding the cliched American prairie-style kind of slow movement that was so typical of Copland, Hanson, Diamond and even Mennin in his early symphonies or Piston himself in some of his (2nd and 4th). The way Piston achieves this is by avoiding the usual pastoral flute or oboe or English horn over carpet of strings, in favor of melodies that are more angular and brooding, either leading to powerful tuttis of quasi Brucknerian massiveness, or, when he does have the woodwind solo instrument convey the melody, underpinned by stern woodwinds and brass accompaniment, often in counterpoint. As a result, Piston's adagios are intensely lyrical without being sentimental. This includes the slow introductions to the first movement allegros, as in Symphony #5 - and the first movement of Symphony # 8 is just that, a slow intro, with no allegro. Speaking of which, Piston's 8th and ultimate composition in the genre is possibly the composer's towering achievement, among other reasons because of its original approach to form, with the first movement an intensely brooding lament, followed by another brooding slow movement. This one should have received the Pulitzer Prize - but a third one, among which two in a row was admittedly unprobable. Piston has been coined a neo-classicist, and he might be in his approach to symphonic architecture, but I think the term is misleading, in that neo-classicism is often associated with a kind of emotional detachment that goes with rhythmic spikiness and Bach-inspired formal processes. There is nothing emotionally uninvolved in Piston's Symphonies. I am not so taken with his finales, whose agitated muscularity (in the 8th) and brash boisterousness appear to me much more common and relying a little too much (in the 5th and 7th) on the common and cliched American hoe-down dance atmosphere, even verging on circus music in the 7th.Still, with these three superb symphonies, this is one of the best possible introductions to the art of Walter Piston. In the absence of any alternative recording and of the scores, I cannot honestly give an informed and valid opinion about the interpretations. In other recordings where one or both of these conditions were met I've always found that both Whitney and Mester were more than reliable conductors, always favoring an urgent and biting approach which suited their 20th Century repertoire perfectly. But ultimately I think one buys this CD not for its interpretations, but for the music.