More All-American Soundscapes at Long Beach

Clayton Stephenson, soloist with the Long Beach Symphony under Music Director Eckart Preu in
the November performance of George Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F.

REVIEW

Long Beach Symphony, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach

DAVID J BROWN

The second concert in the Long Beach Symphony’s 90th Anniversary Classical season illustrated some intersections between inherited European “classical” structural forms and American popular and vernacular music idioms, as represented in works by the African-American William Grant Still (1895-1978), high-flying New Yorker Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981), and the irrepressibly gifted George Gershwin (1898-1937).

William Grant Still.

William Grant Still certainly embraced the symphony as a form, writing five in all, but as with those of Robert Schumann, their numbered order does not follow the chronology of their composition—or at least of those that followed Still’s Symphony No. 2 in G minor “Song of a New Race,” written in 1937 and included by the LBSO under its then recently-appointed Music Director Eckart Preu in the 2017 Veterans Day concert (reviewed here).

Still completed a third symphony in 1945, but then withdrew it. His fourth, entitled “Autochthonous,” followed two years later, and then in 1958 he wrote a “Sunday Symphony” as a replacement for the still-withdrawn third—somewhat oddly, as to have let chronology designate the “Autochthonous” and “Sunday” as No. 3 and No. 4 would seem more logical. As it was, he revised that 1945 No. 3 in 1958 or 1970 (sources differ), and it was premiered as Symphony No. 5 “Western Hemisphere” in December 1970 to celebrate Still’s 75th birthday.

Eckart Preu.

It would be interesting to know whether the 1945 score is still extant, as that would reveal how extensive the revision was. While its predecessor symphonies, in particular the “Afro-American” (No. 1), embrace influences from the blues, jazz, and spirituals, Symphony No. 5 seems an affirmation of sterner stuff, notably in its first movement, an extraordinarily terse three-minute span, ominous from the outset, and some distance from any ethnic influences. Hearing it played with steely trenchancy by the LBSO under Maestro Preu, one wondered whether Still had pared it down from a more loose-limbed original.

By contrast, the languorous and becalmed slow movement—adrift in the bayou perhaps—was embodied by the LBSO strings at their silkiest. As Preu noted in his introductory remarks, this symphony is characterized by steady, even rhythms—in the first movement a resolute onward tread, in the second a soft, background pulse, and in the third, filling the scherzo slot but with no contrasting trio section, a relentless drive, punctuated by slashing string figures slightly reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann’s iconic Psycho motif.

Again in sharp contrast, the finale juxtaposes spiky determination and warm lyricism, leading to a radiantly optimistic “big tune” and jubilant conclusion. This performance, led and played with great conviction, made the best case one could imagine for Still’s Fifth Symphony, and was notably more alert and focused than its only commercial recording. But doubts remained as to its coherence and symphonic viability, particularly regarding the unwontedly gnomic first movement. Was Still’s revision of the 1945 original score just too brutal a slash and burn?

Jessie Montgomery.

Jessie Montgomery’s 2017 Coincident Dances was the program opener—in her own words “inspired by the sounds found in New York’s various cultures, capturing the frenetic energy and multicultural aural palette one hears even in a short walk through a New York City neighborhood.” Prefaced by what George Gershwin might have called its “icebreaker”—a double-bass solo that gave section principal Geoffrey Osika a rare moment in the spotlight—Coincident Dances is cast in two distinct spans, the second here introduced by a trumpet riff from Principal Ryan Darke.

The work’s 12 skillfully intricate minutes seemed to be rendered the more transparent by the side and rear acoustic baffles now installed on the Terrace Theater’s platform, but its timbral and rhythmic variety failed to conceal a pervasive harmonic sameness. In the end, for this listener Coincident Dances didn’t seem to add up to very much or travel anywhere notable, particularly when compared to, say, Duke Ellington’s own aural NYC tour, the cumulatively powerful Harlem, included in the LBSO’s 2022-2023 season finale and reviewed here.

Not being a native-born American with the sounds of George Gershwin absorbed as natally as mother’s milk, for me his Piano Concerto in F from 1925 was relatively unfamiliar, and maybe its sheer unexpectedness was one reason why this smoking firebrand of a performance by Clayton Stephenson, with the LBSO and Maestro Preu matching him every step of the way through all the myriad quicksilver twists and turns of rhythm, harmony, and timbre, made such a powerful impression in the second half of the program.

George Gershwin.

Hot on the heels of Rhapsody in Blue’s sensational success, Gershwin, still only in his mid-20s, was asked by Walter Damrosch, director of the New York Symphony Orchestra, to write a full-scale piano concerto for it. The miracle is that, clearly unfazed neither by the prestigious assignment nor the genre’s looming storied past, he took the standard three-movement concerto form and made it entirely his own, from the defiant / triumphant percussion flourish that opens the first movement’s introduction to the solo tam-tam smash that heralds the finale’s exultant coda.

At around 34 minutes, the duration of this performance was a little longer than average for the work, but far from being down to any unwonted trudging, this was the result of much exquisitely attenuated rubato coordinated as of a single thought between soloist, orchestra and conductor, amidst tempi that throughout responded with consummate flexibility to the ebb and flow of Gershwin’s jazz-inspired score.

Eckart Preu and Clayton Stephenson
at the post-concert reception.

Particularly memorable were the superbly bluesy clarinets that opened the central movement Adagio, leading to an equally haunting account of the trumpet solo that in turn gave way to Stephenson’s idiomatic delineation of the movement’s main theme. Then, after its last long-drawn cadence, the opening of the Allegro agitato finale, though not marked attacca, immediately erupted like a Belmont thoroughbred thundering out of its starting stall.

Even by the elevated standards of recent LBSO/Preu concerto performances, this partnering with Clayton Stephenson was quite exceptional, and was rewarded with a standing ovation that showed no signs of stopping until Mr. Stephenson stilled the cheers by sitting down to deliver a rocket-propelled encore, Hiromi Uehara’s The Tom and Jerry Show. And even this wasn’t the end, as he once again took the piano stool for a last Gershwinian reminiscence—Fazil Say’s arrangement of Summertime Variations. 

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Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach, Saturday, November 9, 2024, 7.30 p.m.

Images: Clayton Stephenson, Eckart Preu: courtesy Long Beach Symphony; 

Eckart Preu: Caught in the Moment Photography; William Grant Still: wrti90.1; Jessie Montgomery: composer website; Gershwin: Carl Van Vechten/Library of Congress.

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