Track Listing

1. Ondine (Symphonic Poem)
2. From a Notebook of Sketches, Suite 1
3. From a Notebook of Sketches, Suite 2 "Athens"
4. From a Notebook of Sketches, Suite 3

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #129693 in Music
• Released on: 2003-01-21
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .23 pounds
• Running time: 67 minutes

Customer Reviews

A Powerful Tone Poem from an Expatriate American Composer
Like his friend and supporter Edward McDowell, George Templeton Strong is nominally an American composer, having studied in Europe and absorbed the mid-nineteenth-century musical idiom of Europe to such a degree that any musical, or extramusical, references to America in Strong's work are almost accidental. Unlike McDowell, Strong apparently did not cotton to the American musical scene, and though he worked briefly at the New England Conservatory under McDowell's tutelage in the 1890s, Strong returned to Europe for the remainder of his long life. (He died in 1948.)

As the other reviewer on this page notes, "Ondine," the most important work on the disc, is very much in the Liszt-Wagner camp, some of the folksy, Rhineland-inspired music of "Ondine" recalling Wagner's "Flying Dutchman." Though the conductor Adriano, in his interesting and very detailed notes to this recording, mentions echoes as well of Dvorak, I find more of a parallel to early Strauss and even to Zdenek Fibich, who was working on his First Symphony while Strong was penning "Ondine." I doubt Strong would have been conversant with the work of either of these composers; it's just that they were clearly drawing from the same musical trough. Oh, and then the slower, more dramatic passages at the start and close do recall Tchaikovsky of the early tone poems. So we have a thoroughly Germanized musical language in "Ondine," which is not to take away from the work's attractiveness. Its drama is heartfelt and well sustained, the folk music depicting Ondine's Rhine journey, pretty and diverting. "Ondine" certainly deserves the advocacy that Adriano gives it on this disc.

That can be said as well of the three orchestral suites taken from Strong's piano music. In fact, while none of the suites makes as strong an impression overall as does "Ondine," individual movements are arresting, especially the spooky second movement of the first Suite ("The Cemetery - Sarabande of the Dead") and, best of all I think, the "Oriental Procession" last movement of the Third Suite, which Adriano had to complete since the subtly effective orchestration was left in rough sketch at Strong's death. Strangely enough, the most American-sounding music here comes in the First Suite's last movement called "In the Inn," a loopy portrayal of merrymaking at a roadside inn that has more of Charles Ives than of the Liszt of, say, the "Mephisto Waltz"--which Strong probably envisioned as its antecedent--in it.

Some movements from the suites were premiered by Ernest Ansermet in the early 1940s, when Strong's music would have seemed like time-capsule gleanings. However, this Naxos recording is apparently the first appearance of the three suites on disc. Again, thanks are due, since the music is worth knowing.

Adriano and his forces clearly believe in this music, and it shows in performances that are respectful in the best sense, faithfully recreating the sound world Strong imagined. There is a slightly rough-and-ready quality to some of the playing (especially that of the winds and horns), but this probably adds to the zest of the proceedings. And the studio recording, though I would have preferred a bit more bloom, is certainly detailed and forceful. In all, a happy addition to the catalog.

An unknown worth knowing
On the strength of the earlier issue of 'Sintram', Strong's second symphony, I obtained this CD to see if my very favorable impression would stand up. It does, although the works here are not quite as strong as the symphony.

The most impressive (and much the earliest, from 1885) piece on this disc is the opener, the symphonic poem 'Ondine', based on the familiar legend of the water nymph who longs for a human soul and which has been set to music by a number of other composers including Dvorak, in his lovable opera, 'Rusalka.' The piece opens with two chords that are precisely those - same key, same instrumentation, slightly different rhythm - that open Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. I thought to myself, 'that's peculiar', until I realized the composer wrote these notes _before_ the better-known piece was written. There's a similar place in the Second Symphony that seems to be copying the main theme and galumphing rhythm of Dukas's 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice', but it, too, was written before the Dukas. It makes you wonder if the better-known composers had known Strong's works.

'Ondine' is written in a language very much in the Liszt/Wagner school, with strong undercurrents of Tchaikovsky, and is a tone poem that tells the story in a fairly linear fashion; one could fashion a narrative ballet from this music, although as far as I know that has never been done.

The three Suites, subtitles 'From a Sketchbook', and none lasting more than fifteen minutes, are late orchestrations of piano duets written in the 1890s. Strong was a very talented painter; indeed, some of his watercolors grace the covers of these Naxos CDs. And these pieces were inspired by some of these paintings. They are slight pieces but neatly imagined. I particularly liked 'Jack the Giant Killer' from the third suite.

The performances and recorded sound are excellent.

When I bought the first disc I was under the impression that Strong was the same George Templeton Strong who wrote a well-known diary from the Civil War years, but it dawned on me, finally, that the composer was too young to have written that book. It turns out that it was his father whose diary I'd read. The father's two volumes on music [ed. Vera Brodsky Lawrence; UChicago Press] are worth chasing down; he was writing about musical life in New York in the mid-19th century.