STUART MILLSON gets lambent glimpses of light

Kenneth Fuchs is Professor of Music Composition at the University of Connecticut. Born in 1956, Fuchs belongs to a generation of modern composers who, whilst creating a sound-world clearly of our time, have partially turned their backs on earlier avant-garde trends, in favour of symphonic music that is optimistic, open, communicative, cohesive and completely accessible to a wide audience — an important consideration in these times of dwindling arts funding and an audience that is not getting any younger. 

Inspired by a painting by his compatriot, Morris Louis — and entitled Point of Tranquility — Fuchs’s work of the same name is a mind-clearing, subtly dazzling eleven-minute tone-poem of sudden, shimmering sunlight. There is a sense of a sea dancing beneath silvery horizons, of new pages turning in life — or even a return to old haunts, refreshed and renewed after a long period of absence. A masterly deployment of orchestral colour, the Buffalo Philharmonic and their conductor, JoAnn Falletta, set us on course for an album that gives us a further three revelatory scores.

Next comes Russell Platt’s Symphony in Three Movements, inspired again by an artist — this time, Clyfford Still (1904-80), creator of what has been described as “dramatically jagged colour fields” and “abstract expressionism.” This work is the most modern item on the CD, with an outdoor, breath-of-fresh-air tonality sharing the orchestral platform with more dissonant forms, and showing in that exciting brew the tremendous virtuosity and flexibility of the Buffalo orchestra, which emerges here as a top-flight US ensemble. (Why haven’t they been invited to the Proms? Why do we never hear them on BBC Radio 3?)

However — for me — the most intoxicating work on the recording is the Oboe Concerto by Randall Svane (born 1955, although the CD notes list his birth-date as 1972). As a lover of Vaughan Williams’s 1944 Oboe Concerto, I was anxious to hear Randall’s piece — a classic example of new Americana. A composer of church music and late-Romantic symphonic works, with distant echoes of Roy Harris, Samuel Barber or the melodious Howard Hanson, the new concerto begins in a pastoral dream: a long, languid span — a haze — of bittersweet reflection; similar in pace to the opening of Walton’s Viola Concerto. The oboe soloist (in this case the Buffalo Philharmonic’s principal, Henry Ward) clearly believes in the work with all his heart, and hearing this gently-questing, passionate piece makes you believe that a new Vaughan Williams is at work in the world. The three movements are entitled: ‘Flowing,’ ‘Very slow,’ and ‘Quick and light.’ Notice the simple titles, no arcane or technical musical notation, just names that provide an easy guide for listeners, particularly newcomers to classical music.

The album concludes with Chinese-American composer, Wang Jie’s orchestral tour de force, The Winter that United Us — a brilliant Stravinsky-like orchestral showpiece, culminating in a broad, noble, hopeful finale; showing the listener that music can help us to overcome the shadows that pass over our world — in this instance, the Covid pandemic and the suffering and anxiety that forced all of humanity to face up to a common crisis.

Recorded at the Kleinhans Music Hall and superbly recorded by sound-engineer, Bernd Gottinger, I have no hesitation in recommending this collection.

CD details: Contemporary Landscapes, Beau Fleuve Records, 605996-998593. bpo.org