George Templeton Strong

[kansasbrandt]

Kansas Public Radio - not bad when it comes to programming unsungs, actually - played his Undine yesterday (30 November).  This was a first for me - heretofore, I'd heard of neither the man nor his music.  I was just curious as to whether or not anyone else had heard either this work or any other that has made it onto disc.  My initial impression of Undine was that it became just a bit monotonous after awhile in its dogged repetition of the same Ride of the Valkyries-like motif.  That isn't to say, however, that his orchestral writing lacked interest; the bass clarinet and the trumpets were especially exposed toward the end.  I wasn't knocked off of my feet by it though.

[febnyc]

Yes, I have three (all?) of the discs which Naxos recorded of Strong's music.  He apparently wallowed in the broader canvases - his orchestral works tend to be overdone I think.  There's something of interest in each one but Strong could have economized and strengthened (pun?) the impact of the dramatic scores he championed.  Like you, I find monotony creeping in as the themes unwind.  Although I haven't listened in a while, I recall his Symphony No.2 "Sintram" as one of the better ones - a sort of meandering tone poem with lots of power and themes of knights, Christianity, struggle and ultimate hope.

See: http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=8.559018&catNum=559018&filetype=About%20this%20Recording&language=English#

[eschiss1]

There are, by the way, at least a few briefer works including a string trio (terzetto for 2 violins and viola) called the school music teacher (Der Dorfmusikdirektor) - don't know of any recording but the parts are at IMSLP. (See Der Dorfmusikdirektor - not PD-EU. Composed 1904 in Vevey - a place with much attached to it!, published 1915, but composer died too late for copyright conditions in the European Union.)

[chill319]

Strong reminds me of those painters from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries who, despite the variety of their styles, all rendered the details of their canvases as emerging, chiaroscuro-like, from a blackish brown or brown background that covers most of the canvas area.  For me this impression is created less by his orchestration, which is not unskillful, than by the unrelieved density of his post-Tristan half-diminished chords and the sombre melodies built thereon.

That said, Undine is a young man's work. Sintram is already more interesting. And, to my taste, the best of Strong comes in his late works, still sober and perhaps too starchy, but profiting from the aesthetic pruning that accompanies the accumulation of creative practice.

As he was a friend of MacDowell and ventured where the latter did not tread (lengthy orchestral works), I originally hoped that his symphonies would appeal to me as MacDowell's sonatas do. So far that hasn't happened. I do believe that a comparison of the two composers makes clear how much MacDowell profited from having Raff as a mentor.