TRASATLANTIC VARESE, GERSHWIN and STRAVINSKY

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS
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In TRASATLANTIC a third CD release by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, with Louis Langrée conducting, the selections are wide ranging stylistically, but nautically sailing steadily towards the United States.

With Gershwin, whose two versions of An American in Paris occupy two of the tracks on this double CD, its Americanness still permeates the Paris setting of the composition. With Edgar Varése, his first shot at an American composition, its flavor is spiced with the European seasoning of an avant-garde French-born composer newly arrived in the New York of the early 1920’s. In both cases it is music about a world getting smaller.

And finally, in Stravinsky’s Symphony in C we hear the work of a brainy composer of pure music writing during a time in which he lost three members of his immediate family, suffered a near-fatal stroke, and barely managed to get out of Europe on the brink of WWII. Again here we are listening to European music commissioned by an American – music that remains a bridge between to worlds.

Two European émigrés, and a musical rube-made-good barely out of Tin Pan Alley all three of which do not walk into a bar, but instead take a transatlantic journey vividly fleshed out by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in tip-top form with a maestro who knows his way in and out of a thousand styles.

The results promise to be richly rewarding in this Fanfare double CD (FC 016) if you come on board. I did and it was smooth sailing.

Rafael de Acha

**** Very   good indeed!

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.”