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Francesca Da Rimini / Air & Gavotte / Suite in E
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About Francesca Da Rimini / Air & Gavotte / Suite In E
Product Description Born in Massachusetts, Arthur Foote was unusual among 19th century American composers in that practically all of his training took place in the United States. His individualistic style recalls the classical structure of Brahms. Review Arthur Foote (1853-1937) first captured my attention and then my heart some 10 years ago on another Naxos recording (8.559039) containing his two piano trios. The Adagio molto of the Trio No. 1 in C Minor is of such throbbing pathos it still takes my breath away every time I hear it. Foote, a member of the so-called "Boston Six," which also included Amy Beach, Chadwick, MacDowell, John Knowles Paine, and Horatio Parker, was among the generation of American composers who were either themselves European trained under the likes of Joachim Raff, Josef Rheinberger, and Max Bruch or they were protégés of those who were. Foote was one of the latter, a student of Paine at Harvard. Unabashed in their Romantic persuasions, most of these Americans championed Brahms, Wagner, and other late-19th- and early-20th-century German composers. The slightly later Charles Ives (1874-1954), a Parker student at Yale, was similarly indoctrinated--anyone familiar with his Dvořák-genuflecting Symphony No. 1 can hear the evidence for himself--but the Connecticut Yankee was too much of a maverick and an iconoclast to stay the course. He followed his bliss in a direction that would lay the foundations for the uniquely American music of Copland, Roy Harris, and William Schuman. Much of Foote's output consists of chamber works--quartets, quintets, trios, and duo sonatas, genres in which he excelled. But his large ensemble works--especially his 1907 E-Major Suite, premiered by the Boston Symphony, and his 1900 Four Character Pieces after "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam"--reveal the sure hand of a master orchestral composer at work. Tchaikovsky was not the only composer whose febrile imagination was fired by Dante's tale of lust and illicit love between Paolo and Francesca who, doubtless to appease medieval morals, were dished their just desserts when they were condemned to spend eternity tossed by the winds of Hell. In fact, at least one other composer besides Foote followed Tchaikovsky's example with an orchestral fantasy or tone poem of his own, Antonio Bazzini in 1890; and two other composers, Rachmaninoff and Riccardo Zandonai (1883-1944), wrote operas on the theme. It would seem that fury hath no hell like lovers scored. If Foote's take on the doomed pair were better known than it is, it might actually overtake Tchaikovsky's fantasy in popularity. Then again, probably not, for I'm prone to hyperbole when I'm swept up by a piece of music new to me that elicits such a powerful response. The more reasoned truth is that Foote was neither as emotionally unconstrained nor as resourceful in inventing orchestral effects to imitate the licking flames and turbulent maelstrom as Tchaikovsky was in his masterful musical portrait of an afterlife of agony and affliction. Foote's score is ultimately too tame and too well behaved to conjure Dante's guilt-trip through the dungeons of shame and forever-frustrated carnal desire. For Tchaikovsky, the guilt trip was all too autobiographical. Foote's Francesca da Rimini is drop-dead gorgeous music, no question about it, but its theme is as it might have been construed by Brahms, whose kindness and compassion in the end would have forgiven the two lovers and reunited them in happiness everlasting. And so it goes with every piece on this disc. The Air from the 1889 Serenade throbs with the heartbeat of Tchaikovsky and the pulse of Grieg. Listen closely, and you will even hear a distant echo of the famous Air from Bach's Suite No. 3 in D Major. The Four Character Pieces after "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam" are orchestral arrangements by the composer of some of his piano pieces. More colorfully orchestrated than Francesca da Rimini, the Persian sketches are painted with harp, percussion
