GEORGE ANTHEIL RAISES CAIN

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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Chandos Records has just released a collection of compositions by the neglected American composer George Antheil.

An iconoclast who lived and wrote in the Berlin and Paris of the 20’s and 30’s before returning to America in 1933, Antheil gradually and cleverly re-fashioned himself from his former self as a cutting-edge enfant terrible, into a working composer, journalist, inventor, and musical entrepreneur. Antheil wrote for Hollywood and eventually for television, enticing the likes of Monteux and Stokowski and Ormandy to validate and conduct his compositions.

Antheil’s music is terrific Pops material. It is also good movie music. His Archipelago is nothing but six minutes of fun that features a Cuban rumba on musical steroids – nothing that any of my extended family would have ever danced to, but more like a good-natured caricature of a sultry Havana night in a dance hall as seen and musically interpreted by a talented tourist with an ear and eye for syncopation and below-the-waist swaying.

The BBC Philharmonic musicians exuberantly dive into this music led by the Finn John Storgårds with splendid results. Hot-Time Dance is another short ditty, descriptive of a bunch of kids raising Cain and dancing around a campfire.

Both Antheil’s Symphony no. 3, “American” and his Symphony no. 6, “after Delacroix” are fertile grounds for inventiveness and resourceful orchestration. Antheil’s use of thematic material shuns the exposition-development-recapitulation of much of Western Classical Music, opting instead for a cumulative, more-is-more pileup  of melodic and rhythmic snippets that create a rich sonic landscape in which disorientation is put to effective use. Oh and he can spin a soulful melody anytime in the slow movements.

The Spectre of the Rose Waltz was written for a 1946 Ben Hecht film noir, and is given here an elegant reading by Storgårds and his Brits.

Storgårds, principal conductor of Finland’s Lapland Symphony Orchestra, and an artist whom we would like to see more in America, mines the music in this CD for all its worth, making Antheil’s works sing and dance and often careen madly while never losing control of the proceedings.

The BBC Philharmonic gets a bit of a workout throughout it, all the while evidencing what a fine orchestra it is.

As usual with Chandos the engineering by Mike George, Stephen Rinker, Carwyn Griffith and Pihilip Halliwell is first class, and the program notes by Mervyn Cooke are learned and apposite. Ralph Couzens is the Executive producer and the mastermind behind this wonderful addition to any collector’s library.

Rafael de Acha                   http://www.Rafaelmusicnotes.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”