ACO asks the big question about American music

The American
Australian Chamber Orchestra
City Recital Hall
November 12
★★★★

When Dvorak took on the role of director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York in 1892, he suggested Native American and Africa-American music should be the basis for an American national style. Today, this seems both naive and prescient.

Most American composers don’t evoke folk tunes the way Dvorak did, most famously in his New World Symphony. But black music was to have an enormous influence on America and throughout the world in a style Dvorak never heard – jazz. This thoughtfully constructed program, culminating in a string orchestral arrangement of Dvorak’s so-called American String Quartet No. 12 in F major, Opus 96, pursued the paths less trodden on American soil in the 130 years since.

One of the most intriguing works was from Florence Price, the first African-American woman to be known as a symphonic composer. Her Five Folksongs in Counterpoint seemed to take Dvorak’s suggestion as a throwing down of the gauntlet. The three selections took Clementine, Shortnin’ Bread and Swing Low through highly developed contrapuntal elaborations reviving 18th-century techniques in a 20th-century context.

One was reminded of Condoleezza Rice’s comment “I speak French, I play Bach – I’m better in your culture than you are.“ The ACO began the program by highlighting the energising impact of immigration in American culture with an arrestingly incisive reading of Bryce Dessner’s Aheym. Conceived as a tribute to his immigrant grandmother, it used the numbing repetitions of American minimalist style in an evolving succession of textures to create surprising, sometimes fierce impact.

Lyric for strings, by George Walker, the first black graduate of the Curtis School of Music, also demonstrated a contrapuntal mindset in its expressive elaboration of descending phrases, conjuring a sound reminiscent of the romantic style of Samuel Barber.

ACO leader Richard Tognetti then plugged in his electric violin for the world premiere of Samuel Adams’ Echo Transcriptions in which the soloist’s amplified line found increasingly rich reverberations of varying density from the orchestra behind. The soloist’s part sank and re-emerged from the sonic fabric as though losing itself within a crowd within a sacred space.

In a movement from Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, violist Elizabeth Woolnough played beautifully shaped solos between quiet orchestral textures like minimalist panels on stone walls. The arrangements from John’s Book of Alleged Dances by John Adams (father of Samuel) sat slightly uncomfortably, the string orchestra sounding slightly stiff and constrained against a click track.