Many years ago I purchased on impulse an RCA album
of music conducted by Charles Gerhardt – mainly because I had been extremely
impressed with Gerhardt’s Classic film Score Series that RCA released
through the 1970s. That album included the best performance to date
of Howard Hanson’s Romantic Symphony and Griffes The Pleasure
Dome of Kubla Khan. Why do I mention this? Because of Gerhardt’s
taste for the exotic and ‘cinematic’ in music; and this Griffes piece
is just that - a sensual and exciting trip to Arabia (one senses retribution
for a violated harem at its climax) One might expect to hear such luscious
music underpinning any Arabian Nights film romance starring Sabu and
Jon Hall from the 1940s. JoAnn Falletta brings out all its voluptuous
languor and perfumed atmosphere. sample
Born in New York City, Charles Griffes studied in Berlin
and France before teaching at a boys’ school in Tarrytown, NY until
his early death in 1920. He was fascinated and much influenced by the
music of Debussy and Ravel – and by Japanese and American- Indian themes
and oriental scales. In his later works polymetric and polytonal features
are apparent.
The White Peacock (1915) was inspired by a poem
by the English late-Romantic novelist William Sharp (1855-1905) writing
under the pseudonym Fiona McLeod. Griffes’ colours and slow, dreamy
approach is very reminiscent of the French Impressionists with a subtle
far eastern overlay. sample
The Three Poems of Fiona McLeod are beautifully
evocative of the gray misty Hebrides, the mysterious light, the breezes
and slow swell of the seas. Barbara Quintiliani, despite a tendency
to vibrato, is dramatic and nicely expressive; her voice, in its controlled
dynamics, used by Griffes as almost an extension of the orchestra.
The lament of Ian the Proud - sample
Thy dark eyes to mine - sample
The Rose of the Night - sample
Bacchanale, at a more pressing tempo,
is as might be expected, something of a hedonistic celebration with
some imaginative writing for brass. The whole is densely, richly scored
and lusciously orchestrated with a contrastingly quieter and more reflective
section. There is much depth and variety in this miniature four-minute
tone poem. sample
Clouds, the fourth and last piece in Griffes’
Roman Sketches is another little gem, full of atmosphere: similar
but quite different to Debussy’s Nocturnes. Here Griffes’ exotic,
wispy harmonies and oriental colours graphically suggest "…golden
domes and towers of a city with streets of amethyst and turquoise."
sample
The Three Tone Poems inspired by poems by W.B
Yeats and Edgar Allan Poe are equally exotic and dream-like; even, as
far as the second and third pieces are concerned, subtly nightmarish.
There is often an unnerving voluptuousness about this music. Griffes
adds a solo piano to good romantic effect in The Vale of Dreams
(Listeners might find in this piece an uncanny resemblance to Jerry
Goldsmith’s music for that notorious film Basic Instinct.)
The Lake at Evening -
sample
The Vale of Dreams
- sample
The Night Winds - sample
Griffes’ Poem for Flute and Orchestra coolly
shimmers and cavorts in sunlit meadows but also squeezes through troubled
menacing thickets. Again, good atmospheric writing particularly for
a sombre threatening horn. Carol Wincenc grasps every virtuoso and expressionist
opportunity. sample
A delightful, exotic, musical picture, story book.
Ian Lace
see also
review by Rob Barnett, Kevin
Sutton
Barbara Quintiliani (sop) * 