Arthur Foote: Francesca da Rimini

Seattle Symphony (Artist), Arthur Foote (Composer), Gerard Schwarz (Conductor), Seattle Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: Seattle Symphony Orchestra
• Conductor: Gerard Schwarz
• Composer: Arthur Foote
• Audio CD (May 26, 2009)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: NAXOS AMERICAN
• ASIN: B0020LSWAC
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #217,665 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Fanfare, Jerry Dubins, Nov/Dec 2009

Arthur Foote (1853-1937) first captured my attention and then my heart some 10 years ago on another Naxos recording (8.559039) containing his two piano trios. The Adagio molto of the Trio No. 1 in C Minor is of such throbbing pathos it still takes my breath away every time I hear it. Foote, a member of the so-called "Boston Six," which also included Amy Beach, Chadwick, MacDowell, John Knowles Paine, and Horatio Parker, was among the generation of American composers who were either themselves European trained under the likes of Joachim Raff, Josef Rheinberger, and Max Bruch or they were protégés of those who were. Foote was one of the latter, a student of Paine at Harvard. Unabashed in their Romantic persuasions, most of these Americans championed Brahms, Wagner, and other late-19th- and early-20th-century German composers. The slightly later Charles Ives (1874-1954), a Parker student at Yale, was similarly indoctrinated--anyone familiar with his Dvořák-genuflecting Symphony No. 1 can hear the evidence for himself--but the Connecticut Yankee was too much of a maverick and an iconoclast to stay the course. He followed his bliss in a direction that would lay the foundations for the uniquely American music of Copland, Roy Harris, and William Schuman.

Much of Foote's output consists of chamber works--quartets, quintets, trios, and duo sonatas, genres in which he excelled. But his large ensemble works--especially his 1907 E-Major Suite, premiered by the Boston Symphony, and his 1900 Four Character Pieces after "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam"--reveal the sure hand of a master orchestral composer at work.

Tchaikovsky was not the only composer whose febrile imagination was fired by Dante's tale of lust and illicit love between Paolo and Francesca who, doubtless to appease medieval morals, were dished their just desserts when they were condemned to spend eternity tossed by the winds of Hell. In fact, at least one other composer besides Foote followed Tchaikovsky's example with an orchestral fantasy or tone poem of his own, Antonio Bazzini in 1890; and two other composers, Rachmaninoff and Riccardo Zandonai (1883-1944), wrote operas on the theme. It would seem that fury hath no hell like lovers scored. If Foote's take on the doomed pair were better known than it is, it might actually overtake Tchaikovsky's fantasy in popularity. Then again, probably not, for I'm prone to hyperbole when I'm swept up by a piece of music new to me that elicits such a powerful response. The more reasoned truth is that Foote was neither as emotionally unconstrained nor as resourceful in inventing orchestral effects to imitate the licking flames and turbulent maelstrom as Tchaikovsky was in his masterful musical portrait of an afterlife of agony and affliction. Foote's score is ultimately too tame and too well behaved to conjure Dante's guilt-trip through the dungeons of shame and forever-frustrated carnal desire. For Tchaikovsky, the guilt trip was all too autobiographical. Foote's Francesca da Rimini is drop-dead gorgeous music, no question about it, but its theme is as it might have been construed by Brahms, whose kindness and compassion in the end would have forgiven the two lovers and reunited them in happiness everlasting.

And so it goes with every piece on this disc. The Air from the 1889 Serenade throbs with the heartbeat of Tchaikovsky and the pulse of Grieg. Listen closely, and you will even hear a distant echo of the famous Air from Bach's Suite No. 3 in D Major. The Four Character Pieces after "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam" are orchestral arrangements by the composer of some of his piano pieces. More colorfully orchestrated than Francesca da Rimini, the Persian sketches are painted with harp, percussion, and pizzicato effects, but again, you can expect more of an outpouring of beautiful music than the exoticisms of Bantock and Hovhaness.

Little wonder that Foote's 1907 E-Major Suite brought the composer much recognition in his lifetime. As with the Serenade, we are reminded yet again of the string serenades and suites by Tchaikovsky, Grieg, and Stenhammar. Two minutes and 18 seconds into the second movement there comes a tearful melody that would have made Mantovani green with envy. The Suite's concluding fugue, however, anticipates by nearly 40 years the fugue on a theme by Henry Purcell in Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. The subject and its rigorous working out are evidence of Foote's solid academic grounding.

This new Naxos CD has only recently been released, but the recording dates of these works are all over the map. Francesca da Rimini and the Rubáiyát pieces were recorded as long ago as 1997, while the Suite was recorded between late 2004 and early 2005, and the Air and Gavotte from the Serenade in 2007. If you're not already acquainted with the works of Arthur Foote, this disc is an excellent place to start. It contains an hour's worth of exceptionally beautiful music in a late-19th- early-20th-century style that's impossible to resist by anyone who loves to luxuriate in the just-barely-past-ripe Romantic garden. Gerard Schwarz and his Seattle players fit Foote like a comfortable pair of shoes.

Urgently recommended, but please explore further. Naxos has recorded a good deal of Foote's chamber music, which was his real forte, and I cannot urge you too strongly to discover it.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars American Classics by Arthur Foote, May 31, 2009

By 

Paul Van de Water (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Arthur Foote: Francesca da Rimini (Audio CD)

Arthur Foote (1853-1937) is one of America's major but little known composers. He was a student of John Knowles Paine at Harvard and a contemporary of George Whitefield Chadwick and Horatio Parker. The Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered and promoted many of Foote's works. In fact, I first encountered Foote on a Pearl CD of Serge Koussevitzky conducting American music, including Foote's Suite in E and the original BSO recordings of Roy Harris's Symphony 1933 and Symphony No. 3.

Like Harris and other better known successors, Foote gave an individual, American idiom to classical forms. The notes to the Pearl disc describe the Suite in E as belonging "to that series of Romantically inclined, neo-Baroque works that can be traced back as far as Grieg's Holberg Suite." Similarly, the Air (from the Air and Gavotte) is modeled after the air from Bach's Third Suite. In contrast, Francesca da Rimini and the Four Character Pieces might be characterized as tone poems.

Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony deserve our thinks for making these orchestral works by Foote available in fine performances with modern sound. If you're already acquainted with Foote, this disc is self-recommending. If you like American symphonic music, you should give it a try.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Foote's in E, October 14, 2010

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Al - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Arthur Foote: Francesca da Rimini (Audio CD)

I you haven't heard Foote start with this album. Melodies like you will never forget.