Information
Composer: George Antheil
- Symphony No. 3 "American"
- Tom Sawyer "California Overture"
- Hot-Time Dance
- McKonkey's Ferry
- Capital of the World
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
Hugh Wolff, conductor
Date: 2004
Label: CPO
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Making out a good case for a breezy but unknown American symphony
George Antheil is doing well, with his First and Sixth Symphonies (11/00), Fourth and Fifth (6/02), and now the unknown Third, all on CPO, not to mention the Naxos coupling of the Fourth and Sixth (6/00). And he is lucky to have a conductor of the calibre of Hugh Wolff taking up his cause and reviving a Frankfurt connection going back to the premiere of Transatlantic, the opera acclaimed there in 1930 but not seen in his native US for another 50 years.
Antheil was hesitant about his Third Symphony, written during the 1930s when he was returning from a decade spent mostly in Europe and exploring his own country. He broke off to write film scores and fulfil other commitments so it was picked up and put down, then revised in 1945. In presumably its first recording, the Third is more successful than commentators have suggested, but as attractive tableaux rather than a symphonic entity.
Antheil wanted to write American music and the breezy syncopations of the third movement show common ground with Copland, who in 1926 regarded Antheil as having ‘the greatest gift of any young American now writing’.
If the Third Symphony is transitional, Antheil was very much in his stride during the 1940s. The short overture Tom Sawyer is an endearing evocation of Mark Twain’s hero, and Hot-Time Dance, premiered at the Boston Pops in 1949, is characteristically swaggering and irrepressible – Antheil’s orchestration can stand up with the most blatant Shostakovich; either would be a smash- hit encore. Capital of the World, a ballet based on Hemingway’s short story, was premiered on television then staged at the Met in 1953. This is the Suite, a suave and polished example of Antheil’s late style. Wolff once again makes the most of every- thing, adequately recorded: Eckhardt van den Hoogen’s long booklet notes are informative, if sometimes oddly translated.
-- Peter Dickinson, Gramophone
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George Antheil (July 8, 1900 – February 12, 1959) was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor whose modernist musical compositions explored the modern sounds – musical, industrial, mechanical – of the early 20th century. Spending much of the 1920s in Europe, Antheil returned to the US in the 1930s, and thereafter spent much of his time composing music for films and, eventually, television. A man of diverse interests and talents, Antheil was constantly reinventing himself. He also wrote magazine articles, an autobiography, a mystery novel, newspaper and music columns.
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Hugh Wolff (born October 21, 1953) is an American conductor. He received his higher education at Harvard and Peabody Conservatory, where he studied piano with Leon Fleisher. Wolff also studied composition with Olivier Messiaen and conducting with Charles Bruck in Paris. He was principal conductor and music director of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic (1981-86), the New Jersey Symphony (1986-93), the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (1988-2000), the Frankfurt Radio Symphony (1997-2006) and the Belgian National Orchestra (2017-22). Wolff has recorded extensively for Teldec, Sony and others.
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Thanks very much for this, Ronald!
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