Bristow Symphony No.4 & Fry Niagara Symphony

[Alan Howe]

From Leon Botstein:
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9370053--bristow-fry-classics-of-american-romanticism

[Justin]

I like Bristow's second symphony so I am looking forward to the fourth, although it doesn't sound uniquely American to me. It was recorded before by Karl Kreuger but in lackluster sound quality.

[Alan Howe]

Very little music written in the 19thC sounded 'uniquely American', I'd venture to say.

[terry martyn]

Although David Hurwitz favourably reviewed this CD , released last year and conducted by Botstein, it has been very difficult to purchase. I had it on order from Presto for a long while, until they informed me that the label (Bridge) had stopped manufacturing CDs of this performance.  But amazon.com notifies me today that my copy has shipped, and it seems that the CD is still available on their website.
The YouTube recording is severely cut, but I gather that no such gelding occurs on this CD.

[Mark Thomas]

"gelding" - thanks for the word of the day, Terry!

[TerraEpon]

It's on streaming sites, so there's that.

It also includes William Henry Fry's Niagara Symphony (which is also on the Naxos disc dedicated to Fry...)

[terry martyn]

My copy arrived from the States this morning.

The Bristow is a swirling,rollicking, High-Romantic symphony, painted with a broad brush. I thought that I was listening to Raff in the rousing Finale. Do not expect profundity, but go with the flow.

Both this and the Mirecki Symphony have been very pleasant surprises for me in recent weeks.

[Alan Howe]

A fun release, to be sure. The Fry is a noisy curiosity which I never want to hear again (!), but the Bristow, given here uncut and running to 42½ minutes, is worth the price of the CD on its own. It's an attractive and often exciting score, well worth resurrecting, the idiom being akin to, say, Rubinstein, i.e. 'conservative-German plus', with hardly a hint of anything truly American-sounding. 

To my ears the Mirecki is a vastly superior work - original and never for one moment outstaying its welcome, which the Bristow teeters on the edge of doing, especially in its opening movement. And there's no comparison with, say, Raff, here either.

[Gareth Vaughan]

I tend to agree somewhat with Alan here. The Bristow is a bit long for its material, I feel, though pleasant enough. The American symphony I really would like to hear is Chadwick's Symphony No. 1, which exists in ms. I enjoy Chadwick's music.
The Fry I know from a Naxos disk and it is entertaining but weird.

[Alan Howe]

Agreed, Gareth. Chadwick is an altogether more sophisticated composer.

[Alan Howe]

Listening again to the Bristow - enjoyable opening movement, but far too long at 15:47. Extended loud climaxes do not a symphonic argument make! Beautiful viola solo, though...

I do hope that Botstein takes an interest in some of our colleague Reverie's realisations of symphonies by Bristow's contemporaries.

Meanwhile the Bristow is added to the pile of yawn-inducing symphonies labelled 'Please Cut Me' and the CD is probably filed somewhere dark and dusty.

[Ilja]

Agreed, Gareth. Chadwick is an altogether more sophisticated composer.

Purely personally, for me this is a classic case of where the "better" (i.e., more accomplished and, yes, more sophisticated) composer is perhaps the less interesting one. For all its technical skill, there is also a generic quality to much of Chadwick's music. Bristow and Fry, for all their imperfections, tried to tread new ground, and with far less of a musical infrastructure than Chadwick could fall back on.

[eschiss1]

Chadwick's first has a chapter to it in "George Whitefield Chadwick: His Symphonic Works" and one that can be skimmed by Google Preview fairly substantially. (It now occurs to me that we discussed this in a thread devoted to the Chadwick first, July of last year.) I get mixed feelings from that: it looks like an interesting early work as early works go. (It did have the benefit of a premiere from ms in March 1882 at the Harvard Musical Association. Faucett has found no record of any performance since. Obviously not counting Rêverie's digital rendition of the first movement (have later movements been added to that?))

[Alan Howe]

Bristow and Fry, for all their imperfections, tried to tread new ground

Fry, to my mind, is not a serious player at all - more a purveyor of curiosities. Bristow's problem is that his ambition far outstrips his abilities; you just can't inflate a Mendelssohn + idiom and produce a satisfactory symphony. Chadwick, however, is an altogether more competent and consistent composer of symphonies - and he never wrote beyond his means, symphonies 2 and 3 both coming in at around 35 minutes. It's amazing how much more confident and persuasive his 2nd symphony (completed 1885) is than Bristow's 4th (composed 1872). Of course, Chadwick (b.1854) is a generation later than Bristow (b.1825) - and it shows.

<<...the New England native is just a damn fine composer. Period.>>
https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/chadwick-symphony-no-2-symphonic-sketches

[Ilja]

I don't entirely disagree with you on Fry, although on must make allowances for his lack of formal education and it's perhaps not entirely fair to compare him to Chadwick (whose difference of a generation meant he could enjoy a much better musical education). That's a bit like comparing a naïve local painter to a pupil of Rembrandt's. On the other hand, Fry is ... interesting because his lack of education led him to ways of expression that are quite unique. It's just a pity he seems unable to build up narrative tension in a piece, so they all end up as chaotic jumbles. Interestingly, the same problem affects his writing.

Bristow is, of course, a different case. For me, the Arcadian is by far Bristow's least successful symphony; the 2nd D minor and (particularly) the 3rd F# minor are both better, even if the former shares the issue of an over-long 2nd movement with the 4th. The 3rd is just a fun "little" symphony, that works pretty well: not too long, and not too pretentious (unlike the 4th).

I really tried to get into Chadwick a few years ago, and the symphonies probably show him at his best (even if the 2nd leans a bit too much toward Stanford for my taste). That endless string of overtures and symphonic poems, on the other hand, seems to come out of the least inspired corner of the Second New England School.