David Diamond: Symphony No. 8; Suite from the Ballet TOM; This Sacred Ground

Erich Parce (Performer), David [6] Diamond (Composer), Gerard Schwarz (Conductor), Seattle Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Erich Parce
• Orchestra: Seattle Symphony Orchestra
• Conductor: Gerard Schwarz
• Composer: David [6] Diamond
• Audio CD (May 18, 2004)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Naxos American
• ASIN: B0001N9ZFC
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,123 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #60 in Music > Classical > Ballets & Dances > Ballets
  • #98 in Music > Classical > Forms & Genres > Suites

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Fine Diamond Orchestral Series Continues, October 16, 2004

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: David Diamond: Symphony No. 8; Suite from the Ballet TOM; This Sacred Ground (Audio CD)

David Diamond (b. 1915, and still with us) has been one of American's finest composers since between the two world wars. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the Delos label issued a series of fine recordings of his orchestral music with the Seattle Symphony conducted by Gerard Schwarz. Naxos has been re-releasing them at budget price (although I notice that the Delos version of this release is still available here at Amazon at mid-price). For some reason each individual Naxos release has typically had slightly different contents from its Delos predecessor, but this one exactly reproduces its Delos source. And a nice one it is, too.

'TOM' was intended to be a ballet based on 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' set to a scenario by E. E. Cummings as requested by American ballet impresario Lincoln Kirstein. But obstacles arose and the ballet was never produced. Here we have a 23-minute, 12-movement suite fashioned from the full ballet score by the composer a couple of years later, in 1937. The music was written when Diamond was only twenty and still a student of Roger Sessions. One can hear some of Sessions's granitic style, but it is leavened by folk-rhythms and -melodies. One can almost hear Diamond developing his mature style with both its etched neoclassic and seductively romantic qualities as the music proceeds. An exemplar of the former is the Stravinskyan 'Dance of the Slavetraders and Human Bloodhounds,' and of the latter is the following 'Dance of Thankfulness for Freedom.'

In 1963 conductor Josef Krips asked Diamond to compose a choral setting of Lincoln's 'Gettysburg Address.' It was premièred late that year by Lukas Foss conducting Krips's Buffalo Symphony Orchestra. It is set for chorus, children's chorus, baritone solo and orchestra and this recording features not only the Seattle Symphony but also the Seattle Symphony Chorus, the Seattle Girls' Choir, the Northwest Boychoir, and baritone Erich Parce. The text is printed in the CD's accompanying booklet. Solemn, tonal/modal, straightforwardly patriotic, it sounds as if it might have been written twenty years earlier during World War II. Deeply heart-felt, it wears it earnestness on its sleeve and one wonders how it was greeted at its première in the turbulent 1960s. As is always the case with this sort of piece, how it is heard is at least partly determined by the tenor of the times in which it is performed. In these days of another war, it is, for me, difficult to avoid thinking of young men (and women) who have also found their 'final resting place,' and hoping it has been for some lasting purpose as it clearly was for those who fell in our Civil War.

Diamond's 30-minute, two-movement Eighth Symphony was written in 1960 to honor of his long-time friend, Aaron Copland, on his sixtieth birthday. Written in mostly tonal but highly chromatic style, it makes more than occasional use of Bergian post-tonality albeit in non-aggressive fashion. The first movement begins rather harshly with a tone-row pounded out by the full orchestra. A more lyrical second theme becomes increasingly important and through various manipulations of both motifs the movement winds its way to a vigorous Schumanesque (Bill, not Robert) brass/percussion peroration that then ends with a diffident upward questioning gesture. The second movement is an adagio Theme and Variations (seven of them) ending in a grand double fugue whose theme is derived from the first theme of the first movement. This is not one of Diamond's more lyrical symphonies. It was written at a time when American composers were facing the atonal imperative--indeed, his friend Copland had just written his twelve-tone 'Connotations' for orchestra--but the ever-present Romantic nature of Diamond's music keeps winning through. So, although this is perhaps the toughest of Diamond's symphonies and to some degree uncharacteristic of his overall style, one still hears the rhythmic, harmonic and structural qualities that are so identifiably Diamondesque.

Schwarz and his Seattle forces perform admirably throughout.

TT=68:54

Scott Morrison

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A fine symphony and two duds, but the performances are exemplary, May 7, 2010

By 

G.D. (Norway) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: David Diamond: Symphony No. 8; Suite from the Ballet TOM; This Sacred Ground (Audio CD)

The performances on this disc are exemplary, and as such Naxos's series of the music of David Diamond might turn out to be another major feather in their cap. Diamond's musical language is breezily sinewy, neo-classical and well crafted with strong American flavors - not particularly original but carried out with more skill and inspiration than most other composers writing in a similar vein. That said, the program on this disc is not the place to start, comprising as it does two of Diamond's weaker works alongside the relatively rewarding eighth symphony.

To start with the latter, it is a superbly constructed work in two movements; relatively heavily (but not opaquely) contrapuntal and intelligently scored, slightly Coplandesque but more chromatic and also containing a twelve-tone main theme (is it only me, or are there touches of Britten, even, in the score?). It is serious music, with a whiff of the academic in comparison to some of his contemporaries - although not perhaps as melodically memorable as the music of some of those contemporaries - but displaying something of an individual voice. It is not a masterpiece but still a rewarding work definitely worth a listen.

The same cannot be said of the couplings. The early ballet suite (based on Uncle Tom's Cabin) is tuneful enough but very, very slight in its attempts to combine Stravinskian elements with a very American language without particular success (there is nothing memorable here). `This Sacred Ground' is a setting of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address for baritone, chorus and orchestra. Such projects usually end up being either painfully banal and bombastic, or (if that is avoided) thoroughly dull. Diamond's fall into the latter category; an eminently superfluous work of the kind you only wait for to end, in other words. Still, the performances are admirable throughout and the sound is superb. Recommended for fans of the composer, but newcomers are advised to start by seeking out a more consistently rewarding program of Diamond's works.