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Music Made in the USA

The Columbus Indiana Philharmonic is up and running with their new season, and it started off with an all-American musical bang. The concert, “Made in the USA,” featured music of Gershwin, Copland, and Anderson.

The orchestra also featured an exceptional guest artist, pianist Jeffrey Biegel. Simply put, I love this guy’s playing. His sure-handed and eloquent interpretations give you the feeling that you’re eavesdropping on a guy who happened to find a piano onstage, and unabashedly sat down to play a few tunes for his own pleasure—at a remarkable musical level. It was an intimate musical experience, despite the 60 or 70 musicians onstage, and the packed house that gave Mr. Biegel a standing ovation after the first half, and again after the concert was completed.

Conductor David Bowden began the concert with Gershwin’s An American in Paris. It’s a work rife with musical rhetoric, from brass renditions of car horns to the jazz club feel. I tend to like my jazz a bit “oilier,” but hey, it’s a bunch of folks in tuxes and dress blacks, after all.

Mr. Biegel joined the orchestra for Leroy Anderson’s Piano Concerto in C Major from 1953. It’s refreshing to hear works that are outside of the usual concert fare, and Mr. Biegel has championed this relatively unknown work for a couple of years now. Anderson’s music is a staple of pops orchestras everywhere, and he’s perhaps best known for Sleigh Ride. This concerto borrows heavily from diverse sources: orchestration from Tchaikovsky and the Russians, slow sections reminiscent of Chopin’s Nocturnes, and some heavy influence, if not outright quotation, from Gershwin’s An American in Paris which was written just a couple years earlier. Anderson’s first work in a large-scale format, according to the program notes, makes an uneven musical landscape. But therein lies some of its charm. Americans have borrowed heavily from European composers for centuries now, so why not steal a bit from our own substantial resources and add it to the mix? It’s a work that deserves more play, and Mr. Biegel is a fine champion.

Few orchestral “American” programs would be complete without some Copland.  Appalachian Spring, originally composed as a ballet for Martha Graham and premiered in 1944, is renowned for its treatment of the Shaker melody, “Simple Gifts.” Early on, Copland set out to find a style that would connect emotionally and directly with an audience. The result became a signature style cognizant of American landscapes, our pioneer roots, and rural idioms (barn dances and fiddle tunes, for example)—oddly ironic from a Lithuanian-Jewish urbanite from New York who combines these influences with modernistic techniques such as polytonality, shifting meters, and open harmonies. The work sounds much easier than it is, and Mr. Bowden led the orchestra in a deft performance.

Concertmaster Véronique Mathieu played several solos with beautiful pristine accuracy. I should mention, regretfully, that there is not room here to mention every fine solo in this concert from the various sections of the orchestra, of which there were many. The best orchestral players are fine soloists and chamber players in their own right, and that was exhibited here from every section. The brass was a particular powerhouse. I also noted a number of new faces in the ensemble, and while blend and ensemble playing were generally fine, I suspect when this newest edition of the CIP settles in, it may be the finest to date.

The finale of the concert returned to Gershwin for Rhapsody in Blue, again with Mr. Biegel at the 88s. It’s a common orchestral phenomenon that, when there is a great soloist in front, the players in the back tend to push the level up a notch. Mr. Biegel set the tone, and the orchestra was tuned right in. After a well-deserved second ovation, he sat down to play an encore, “Rush Hour in Hong Kong” (No. 3 of Three Chinese Pieces) by New York composer Abram Chasins (1903 – 1987). Simple in construction but devilishly demanding of virtuosity, it couples Chinese melodic idioms to Lisztian velocity to produce a really compelling encore.

If this concert is any indication of the season to come, the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic audience is in for a wild ride.

Cary Boyce is composer-in-residence and artistic co-director of the production group and new music ensemble, Aguavá New Music Studio, which specializes in projects involving contemporary music.