Amy Beach: "Gaelic" Symphony; Piano Concerto

Amy Beach (Composer), Kenneth Schermerhorn (Conductor), Nashville Symphony (Orchestra), Alan Feinberg (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Alan Feinberg
• Orchestra: Nashville Symphony
• Conductor: Kenneth Schermerhorn
• Composer: Amy Beach
• Audio CD (June 17, 2003)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Naxos American
• ASIN: B00008ZZ2Z
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,842 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #98 in Music > Classical > Instruments > Keyboard > Piano

Editorial Reviews

Naxos brings together, for the first time on a single disc, two of Amy Beach’s finest compositions, her Piano Concerto, Op. 45, and her "Gaelic" Symphony, Op. 32 which makes use of four traditional Irish tunes in addition to original themes composed in the same idiom and spirit. Born supremely gifted in piano and composition, she grew up in an era when society expected women to marry and stay at home, not have professional careers. Against opposition from family and society, she first became a concert pianist and, after marriage, this country ’s first successful female composer of major concert works.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two Sunny Beaches, August 5, 2003

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Amy Beach: "Gaelic" Symphony; Piano Concerto (Audio CD)

Oh, how I envy pianist Alan Feinberg. If I were a virtuoso pianist, his is the kind of career I'd choose. He specializes in mostly American, mostly new music and has the advantage of presenting generally unknown pieces to an admiring audience. He has recorded music by such composers as Andrew Imbrie (the Concerto), Charles Ives (Songs, other pieces), Charles Wuorinen (3rd Sonata, Trio), John Adams (China Gates), Henry Cowell, Mario Davidovsky, Ralph Shapey, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Leo Ornstein, Paul Bowles, and even Thelonious Monk, among others. He rarely plays 'old-fashioned' American music, although he has recorded some music by Charles Tomlinson Griffes, our primary impressionist composer. Here he plays, with the admirable support of the Nashville Symphony conducted by their long-time music director Kenneth Schermerhorn, the 1899 Piano Concerto of Amy Cheney Beach (1867-1944; known in my student days as Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, and invariably referred to by us whippersnappers as Mrs Haha Beach).

The Piano Concerto is a four-movement, 37-minute, grandiloquent showpiece that is from the sound world of Grieg or MacDowell: melodious, big-gestured, rigorously crafted with an immediately discernible Romantic form--a crowd-pleaser if ever there was one. And in its day it pleased many concert-goers. Beach herself played the solo part at its 1900 première by the Boston Symphony. It was recorded before, perhaps twenty years ago, by Mary Louise Boehm, a pianist who has made something of a specialty of Beach's music, but this new recording supersedes the older one largely because Feinberg's performance is more assured and brilliant, the sound is crystalline, and the Nashville Symphony's playing is much better than that by the Westphalian Symphony under Siegfried Landau.

Another advantage of this issue is that Beach's once-familiar 'Gaelic Symphony' (1896) is coupled with the Concerto. It has tougher competition on CD--a Chandos recording by Neeme Järvi conducting the Detroit Symphony--but this performance is quite as good, and of course Naxos's budget price, as usual, is a definite plus.

If anything, the 42-minute, four-movement Gaelic Symphony, making use of Irish tunes (as well as original tunes that Beach wrote in the style of Irish folksongs), is even more tuneful and immediately attractive than the Concerto. The Andante second movement is particularly appealing; its major theme is the kind that immediately sticks in your mind's ear and won't let go (what the Germans call an Ohrwurm, an 'ear worm'). The third movement (Lento con molta espressione) is luscious and deeply melancholic. The symphony ends with a congeries of Irish tunes and dances in a paean of dramatic exultation.

I have no hesitation in recommending this CD. It is another recording in Naxos's admired American Classics series which seems to go from glory to glory. Naxos is doing for American classical music what Lyrita, Conifer, Hyperion and Chandos have done for native British music. The ongoing discovery of the depth and value of our American classical heritage continues to thrill me.

Scott Morrison

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Naxos and the NSO do it again, September 14, 2003

By 

Robert L. Estes (Nashville, TN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Amy Beach: "Gaelic" Symphony; Piano Concerto (Audio CD)

Scott Morrison has already provided the salient details about this wonderful recording. This was arguably the best of last season's NSO concerts, and the recording is even better. TPAC's Jackson Hall seems to be an excellent symphonic recording studio, an interesting contrast to the scattered "dead spots" one must occasionally suffer through as a concertgoer depending on the seat assignment (the symphony will move to a new, allegedly acoustically superior hall in 2006). For those few who might hesitate to purchase a recording by a "second tier" orchestra, I can assure you that the mostly youthful members are graduates of America's best conservatories and university music departments. The core group has been together long enough to establish a cohesive tone with precision which rivals the "name" orchestras when they play their best, as they do here. Bernstein protege Schemerhorn conducts these works with grace and sensitivity - and Feinberg's piano performance is amazing. Highly recommended.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, July 15, 2003

By 

gverdi (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Amy Beach: "Gaelic" Symphony; Piano Concerto (Audio CD)

The British journal Gramophone gave this disk a rave review, and I understand why. This is gorgeous stuff. Romantic, in the Chopin/Brahms mode, but distinctive. Try it, if you like Romantic music, I guarantee you will love this recording!