Customer Reviews

Amy Beach: "Gaelic" Symphony; Piano Concerto

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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

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.

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!

Thank you Naxos for bringing us yet again rarely heard performances of our American heritage of classical composers. This time around it is Amy Beach's Piano Concerto and "Gaelic" Symphony. These compositions are finely crafted pieces that are worthy of regular appearances in concert halls.
The Piano Concerto is richly and warmly Romantic, with the piano sparkling like a cold glass of champagne. Her "Gaelic" symphony has to be ranked as one of America's finest symphonic outputs ever. If you think of Gershwin and Copeland when you think of American classical music, then you are missing out on some truly amazing works.

Finally a recording of the piano concerto that does justice to it! Feinberg works wonders with this piece, and Schermerhorn backs up his soloist to the hilt. This is really a symphony for piano and orchestra-many times the orchestra has the big, romantic melodies while the pianist plays glittering arabesques around it. For the pianist, many large cadenzas fuel the piece with virtuoso fireworks. The Gaelic symphony to me is not as amazing as the piano concerto although Schermerhorn does the work justice, but not as well as the Jarvi/DSO on Chandos. But either performance does not convince me that the 3rd movement is not a note too long. Anyway, a most impressive achievement, and a great addition to the Naxos catalog (I must have 1,000 Naxos CD's now!)

Although I have had a solid appreciation for classical music for 5 decades, and own an extensive collection, I had never had the pleasure of hearing Beach's music until I purchased this CD from Amazon. The sympony is well structured and true to 19th century styles, but the concerto is simply brilliant and very much on the Olympian level of Chopin and Liszt. I had also never heard the Nashville Symphony perform, and this is one very accomplished ensemble, not necessarily expected from the home of country music. This bargain priced CD is a gift from the Gods and a find that any lover of traditional classical music will certainly welcome.

A previous reviewer hits the nail on the head; the "Gaelic" symphony is more than competent but the Piano Concerto is a masterpiece. It is long (four movements, forty minutes), full of good tunes and asks the soloist to be almost continually virtuosic with little respite, and he rises to the challenge brilliantly, as does the conductor and orchestra. A look at the score (from IMSLP) confirms this; the composer clearly completely understood the piano and wrote magnificently for it, but also gives the orchestra a lot to do.

My only minor criticism is that the recording places the piano a little too forward and, as its part is stuffed with instructions like "tutta forza" (with all force) and "martellato" (hammered), it tends to drown out the orchestra, which is frequently doing something interesting rather than a simple accompaniment.

But I recommend this recording wholeheartedly; it is the best recording of a piano concerto I have heard for some time.

These are two of Amy Beach's premier compositions. She is renowned as the top female American (born in New Hampshire) composer of her day, no thanks to her parents who did not much savor the idea of "career women". Beach was a prodigal pianist, highly skilled, but was limited in that endeavor largely by her husband, Dr. Beach, (her maiden name was Cheney), to one public appearance per year. He was, however, very supportive of her endeavors in composing her music.

When Dvorak launched his "New World Symphony," (Symphony No. 9), it was conveyed with an idea to celebrate his newfound home, presented as a sort of gift, to and for America. Beach challenged this idea to some degree in that she believed that a composer should, through nationalistic music, celebrate and commemorate their ancestral homelands, which in her case was Ireland.

This music is quite typical of the period in which Beach composed. Her piano concerto shares a similar flavour with Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F. I also detected some parallels with the Rachmaninoff concertos, (which are more complex) manifesting the genre of "Modern Music".

The "Gaelic" Symphony, to my ear, is somewhat reminiscent of the larger works of Mendelssohn. There is nothing brash about it and the work is quite melodic, and where Beach was clearly clinging to her Irish roots.

The Nashville Orchestra, while rendering a nice, tight work here, is still "young" and listeners should therefore not expect a huge, rounded sound that one might experience with, say, the Boston Symphony Orchestra. "It is what it is" at this point in their development and I much look forward to hearing more of their CD releases in the coming years.

Overall, for some nice road or dinner music, you won't go wrong by acquiring this recording. It's a superb selection of Beach's works, a fine job in coveying them by the Nashville Orchestra, and thanks again to Naxos for making these historic compositions available to us.

This CD contains one very fine work, the symphony, and one masterpiece: the piano concerto. This would be the second recording for both of them. I vigorously encourage program directors to consider putting the Beach Piano Concerto in their season concerts. It is one heck of a great piano concerto. I'm not one to heap too large a dose of ecstatic praise on lesser-known works, but this is one of the most exceptional of piano concertos I have ever heard.

These works both are from the post-romantic era, so they are textured appropriate to that time. But one gets the sense of more mobility...there is no `sluggish' moving here. And moreover, they sound American. Even the "Gaelic" Symphony leaves its stamp as a purely American work. There is fine playing from pianist Feinberg, and from Schermerhorn and the Nashville Symphony.

I fully recommend Mrs. Beach's two great orchestral works.

Would love to hear the piano concerto live, but alas so much great American music is rarely performed. Hope that changes someday. In the meantime we have these great Naxos recordings. Both the concerto and symphony are winners. And the quality of sound and performance is excellent. A great buy!