Reviews

I really enjoyed Volume One of this cycle, so devoured this second instalment. Fuchs deals in broad, inventive orchestral strokes and doesn't shy away from his musical emotions. Thrilling,too, to have John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London apply their innate musicality and attention to detail on modern works like these. So much to enjoy here, but especially Light Year and the vibrant Bass Trombone Concerto.   — Michael Beek (reviews editor)

John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London continue their exploration of the orchestral works of Kenneth Fuchs in a second volume which includes two concertos, one for bass trombone and the other for alto saxophone, both of them special.

Fuchs drew his inspiration for the alto saxophone concerto Eventide from the Riverside Church in New York City, where he witnessed ‘the mysterious quality of the sunset light’ penetrating the stained glass windows. His set of fantasy variations references two Spirituals, their characteristic three-note intervals embellished in the introduction by the soloist over a shimmering tinsel of percussion. The nocturnal variations continue in a ‘Con fantasia’ with divided strings all aglow in the acoustic of St Augustine’s, Kilburn, a ‘Nachtmusik’ with saxophone and orchestral players in imitation of things that go bump in the night, then ‘“Bong” like a church bell’, a spooky scene heightened by the soloist employing multiphonics. A scurrying scherzo, suggesting that the composer may have had choreography in mind, lands with biting wit, before a tranquil coda where church bells have the final say. Soloist Timothy McAllister gives a warm and glittering performance, the timbre of the alto saxophone offering a sweet reminder of its past as a staple of the dance band era.

No one who heard James Buckle play Nelson Riddle’s arrangement of Gershwin’s Second Piano Prelude at a BBC Prom last season will be surprised to hear him bring the same touch of insouciance to Fuchs’s Bass Trombone Concerto. My, how he identifies with that blue opening phrase, seamlessly gliding through the lyrical lines with impeccable intonation, his agility awe-inspiring. A whiff of greasepaint informs the theatrical second movement with its balletic counterpoint, a suggestion of patter-song here, a burst of drum kit there. Soloist and orchestra ride in tandem in the Allegro poco agitato, dashing through the Latin-tinged scoring, landing punches left, right and centre in the stereo sound picture to the terrific finish.

Point of Tranquility, an ‘Idyll for winds, brass, strings and percussion after a painting by Morris Louis’, unfolds ‘as if mirroring the viewer’s eye as it moves across the canvas’, to quote from Guy Rickards’s inestimable notes. The musical landscape is captured in imaginative and colourful orchestration beginning with a slow chorale emerging from the deep. John Wilson ensures each section of the orchestra speaks to the listener, the conductor’s ear finely tuned.

Light Year was composed for Wilson and his orchestra in the wake of Vol 1’s Cloud Slant and once again it takes its cue from the artist Helen Frankenthaler. If this suite of six canvases for virtuoso orchestra on our sky at night bears an occasional resemblance to the earlier work, the orbit is set anew in scale and content, offering marked contrasts from the sombre view of a parched ‘Lunar Valley’, painted in mesmeric detail by woodwinds and brass, to ‘Hot Ice’, a devilish scherzo where woodwind instruments attempt (vainly?) to stay afloat in a melting world. ‘Constellation’ gathers themes and thoughts, crumbs of comfort perhaps, but there’s no mistaking a trait of light on the track that gives the suite its title, a brilliant toccata where each section of the orchestra resonates under the conductor’s assured and insightful direction.

The scope and flair of the playing in this second volume of Fuchs’s orchestral works, and the range of music presented, make it essential listening, not least for the inclusion of those two concertos.   — Adrian Edwards

The second volume in this Chandos series devoted to the orchestral music of the contemporary American composer Kenneth Fuchs (b.1956) proves to be as enjoyable as the first….

This immaculately recorded SACD opens with a performance of ‘Light year’ (2022-2024) … a six movement suite for orchestra after six paintings by Helen Frankenthaler…. The titles of the six movements are ‘Star Gazing’, ‘Stella Polaris’, ‘Lunar Valley’, ‘Hot Ice’, ‘Constellation’ and ‘Light Year’ that may perhaps provide an indication of the composer’s febrile imagination and his characteristic iridescent orchestral textures on display here. As one might expect, John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London revel in the opportunities provided by the composer to project both the diversity and subtleties of Fuchs’ score to the receptive listener, aided of course by the superfine clarity of the Chandos recording.

Fuchs’ ingenious craftsmanship is further epitomized by the two contrasting concertos that follow.

•••

Highly recommended.Performance:  Sonics (Multichannel):   — Graham Williams

It’s gratifying to see that a major company such as Chandos has now turned its attention to the music of the gifted American composer Kenneth Fuchs.

•••

The program opens with Cloud Slant, the orchestral concerto, in which the listener is greeted with several quickly descending waterfalls of notes. A minute in, there is a quick virtuosic passage of unison violins which further cements the status of the work as a true concerto with the soloists comprising the various sections of the orchestra. Excitement is generated in this movement through the composer’s skillful juxtaposition of flowing lyrical lines with pulsing rhythmic figures and coups d’archet. Beyond its virtuosity, the work forms a miniature Pictures at an Exhibition of sorts, given that its three movements each set paintings by the late American abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler. Thus, we hear in sequence settings of her Blue Fall, Flood, and the title-generating Cloud Slant, painted in three successive years beginning in 1966. In this Concerto, the composer attempted to expand his vision for the work beyond a mere musical depiction of these paintings to encompass his reactions to “their artistic sweep and power” as well.

•••

The flute concerto comes in Solitary the Thrush, which actually features two members of the flute family, the C and alto. Fuchs was himself a flutist in his high school days and attained some proficiency, and his writing clearly demonstrates that he knows his way around the instrument. The work was inspired by (and its title taken from) a line in Walt Whitman’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d. The opening portion of this one-movement, multi-section concerto is freely constructed as the solo C flute rhapsodizes over a fairly simple orchestral accompaniment. The second section of this work evokes the atmosphere of the “night music” that composers (including Bartók) have portrayed so effectively. Here, the solo instrument switches to the alto flute, and the darker colors of this instrument are superbly recapitulated in the gestures and textures of the orchestra. Fuchs also creates exotic effects through the use of color instruments such as the vibraphone. The C flute reappears in the final portions of the work, and features impressively executed quick double-tonguing by the extremely gifted soloist, Adam Walker. His purity of tone and technical fluency are marvels to hear….

•••

Conductor John Wilson and his colleagues in the Sinfonia of London do a masterful job of bringing these recorded premieres to what I hope will be a wide audience, and I shall greatly be anticipating future releases in this series. Here’s a disc that few music lovers will want to miss. — David DeBoor Canfield

Critics’ Choice: If you haven’t before come across the name of Kenneth Fuchs, let me recommend him to you with all possible urgency, for here is a composer of contemporary music who brings to his compositions a winning combination of melody, dazzling orchestration, design and balance. Moreover, he could not receive greater advocacy than that accorded him by the Sinfonia of London and their conductor John Wilson. The recording by Chandos is something to live for!”   — Adrian Edwards

The music of American composer Kenneth Fuchs (b 1956) has been growing more prominent as of late. There is a five-disc Naxos series of his music with JoAnn Falletta and the London Symphony, the last of which won a Grammy (review below ▼). Here he is with Britain’s orchestra of the moment, John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London. He is the first living American to have music recorded by the group. This release is labeled as the first volume, so more is to come.

Fuchs’s teachers included Babbitt, Diamond, and Persichetti; but his tonal style runs closest to Copland and Barber, with a bit of Hollywood and the sleek, modern sound of Adams in the mix. Each of these pieces demonstrates the work of a communicative, skilled, and imaginative composer. They all, to a degree and without falling into a formula, vacillate between calm, tender moments and passages bursting with vitality.

The album has a stunning opener in Cloud Slant (2021), a concerto for orchestra arising from his long fascination with the abstract-expressionist paintings of Helen Frankenthaler. It is one of the more remarkable translations of visual art to music that I’ve heard—gestural figures become not merely abstract brush strokes, but part of a rich, colorful, lyrical whole.

Solitary the Thrush (2020) follows. It is a flute concerto inspired by the Whitman Poem `When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’, an elegy for Lincoln. It is a searching, often mysterious, but finally tender and warm contemplation on grief and death, with plenty of melodic acrobatics for the soloist, who switches to alto flute for calmer lyrical interludes.

•••

This is a fine release, especially if you are new to Fuchs’s music as I am. John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London give fantastic performances; their past projects with Korngold and classic Hollywood scores make them the right team to make this lush, romantic, and exciting music sing. I look forward to the second volume!   —FARO

Editor’s Choice: “The ever-excellent Sinfonia of London turn their virtuosity to new music, and to richly scored, beautifully crafted works by Kenneth Fuchs.… [Solitary the Thrush] is an extraordinary, visionary piece, unsettling at times, the eerie tone of the alto flute dwelling on the poem’s theme of man’s mortality. Flautist Adam Walker captures the poetic spirit of the piece beautifully.… The Sinfonia of London and their conductor were born for this music and execute it with aplomb. The recording, like the playing, is immaculate.”    — Adrian Edwards

High-level craftsmanship … predominates, further polished by the verve and precision of John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London, at their most impressive in the bright colour splashes of Cloud Slant, the concerto for orchestra especially written for Wilson and this album. Expert flautist Adam Walker adds his own lustre in the wheeling arabesques of the Whitman-inspired Solitary the Thrush. So, sonic dazzlements galore; though there’s only one piece that advances enough beyond surface delight to achieve a forceful emotional impact. It’s Quiet in the Land from 2017, a sharpened version of a chamber landscape piece written during the Second Gulf War, newly disrupted by menacing dissonances, a snarling side drum, and, right at the end, the kind of disquiet that gets under your skin.   — Geoff Brown

If you have not heard of Kenneth Fuchs, you just might want to give this Chandos disc a try. Why? Because the Grammy-Award-winning American orchestral composer has an original style that is melodic and conveys a wonderful mesmeric musical landscape. Fuchs’ compositions tell a story through imaginative and colourful orchestration, where the different sections contribute inventive parts.

Cloud Slant, the virtuoso Concerto for Orchestra (after three paintings by Helen Frankenthaler), was written for this recording. The triptych depicts three of Frankenthaler’s canvasses, which are not just Fuchs’ reactions to them but his reactions to their artistic sweep and power, as Guy Rickards points out in his excellently constructed programme notes ….

Solitary the Thrush is a flute concerto, and given that the flute was Fuchs’ first instrument and his appreciation of orchestration, this is an empathetic piece brought to life through Adam Walker’s superb mastery of his instrument. I am not a huge fan of the flute, but this concerto is one I am drawn to through its irresistible poetic beauty. It was inspired by that great American poet, Walt Whitman’s Memories of President Lincoln. Walker interweaves superbly with the orchestra as his flute glides over the sky, twittering, singing, and swooping in and out of the orchestral sound. Nothing is intrusive, and it ends in a dreamy filmic quality where:

Pacific Visions, composed as a concert opener, is in one movement for string orchestra, another texturally rich score reminiscent of Copland. The disc ends with Quiet in the Land, where, once again, in the opening bars, music speaks to the listener. Rickards writes that the harmonic ambiguity of the score left the listener in little doubt about the unquiet human landscape lying just out of view (if not earshot). It is a striking piece; the subplot is the impact of the Second Gulf War.

John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London vividly captures the shades and tones of the music, ensuring the emotional intelligence that Fuchs brings to each of his compositions is intensely captured with playing that shines with a vibrancy and brilliant contributions from each of the players.   — Andrew Palmer

Kenneth Fuchs's music has a lot going for it — and a lot going on in it. “Cloud Slant,” the first work in this beautifully recorded new disc dedicated to the American composer, touches base with Mahler, Britten, Barber, Bernstein, Herrmann and more. Yet it never succumbs to pale pastiche; rather, you sense the control Fuchs exerts, and his evident and infectious joy in doing so. The piece shimmers, and you are carried along by it. The writing for flute, violin and horn is particularly striking, as is — dependably — the playing of Wilson and the Sinfonia of London. “Solitary the Thrush,” a concerto for flute, is alternately storm-tossed and serene, the soloist and the strings frolicking with giddy abandon.   — Dan Cairns

The scores, as heard here in gloriously deep-staged and brilliant sound, are awash with oxygen and rich in melody. The players and conductor are celebrities and their playing is of a piece with that hard-won status…. The mastery and sheen of his music demand, and in this Chandos disc receive, the highest in skill and percipience…. Fuchs has a brilliant tonal voice and here it is heard through a medium that equates to un-smeared dustless glass.— Rob Barnett

After intermission, it was internationally acclaimed pianist Jeffrey Biegel’s turn to enthrall the audience as he played American composer Kenneth Fuchs’ piano concerto “Spiritualist” …..

It’s based on three paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, “Spiritualist,” “Silent Wish,” and “Natural Answer.” Fuchs told a pre-concert audience that he was “captivated” by the beauty, silent images, the quality of expression — and a “sense of wistfulness” — in her work. It represented to him “a silent wish, a natural answer” to celebrating life. And he said he had long intended to use three of her “gorgeous canvases“ as a basis for a musical journey in a piano concerto. “Taken together,” he said, “their titles make a logical progression, visually, emotionally, and musically. I am grateful to my long-time friend and Juilliard classmate Jeffrey Biegel for encouraging me, and his musical consultation, to compose the work.”

Then, Biegel, at the keyboard, made it all come so very alive, with Maestro Raffaele Ponti’s direction and the orchestra’s quite visual enthusiasm.

It was stunning. Art and life, via piano. There was the symphony’s communicative background — at times whispering strings to augment, but never to overcome, the virtuoso power of the piano played by Biegel. As his fingers glided — easily then emphatically, among the keys, his body language alone almost transfixed the audience. The reaction was tumultuous.— Bill Jones

Sometimes one goes to an orchestra concert mainly for entertainment and enjoyment, to revel in the sounds of the familiar. Other times, one goes to be challenged, to experience something with fresh ears and ultimately learn something new in the process.

Saturday’s Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra program, “Classical Sax,” was a satisfying combination of both. With Music Director JoAnn Falletta making a snowbird appearance with the Sarasota Orchestra, guest conductor Thomas Wilkins led an interesting program mixing standard fare with lesser-heard gems. Of particular interest was the live [performance] of Kenneth Fuchs’ “Rush” – Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, which earned Falletta her third Grammy Award in 2018, with the London Symphony Orchestra.

As undeniably brilliant as that Naxos recording is, sometimes it takes a live performance for a musical work to make its full impact, particularly in the flawless acoustics of Kleinhans Music Hall. Fuchs’ output includes many works for wind band, and “Rush” showcases his mastery of the alto saxophone’s versatility in a symphonic setting. World-renowned saxophonist Timothy McAllister’s brilliant, crowd-pleasing performance was equal parts rock-star swagger and supremely polished musicianship.— Leonidas Lagrimas

In my review of Naxos’s disc of vocal music by Kenneth Fuchs (Fanfare 38:5), I referred to Fuchs’s music as “eminently approachable” yet “simultaneously sophisticated.” Both qualities are on display in the eight-minute Duo in One Movement (called “Duo for Violin and Piano” in the booklet note by the composer himself …). The piece is light of foot, helped by the exemplary violin playing of Julie Rosenfeld. From its buzzing beginning, vital and alive, the Duo moves to a place infused by the spirit of the dance. Rosenfeld was for 32 years first violinist of the Colorado String Quartet (whose box of the late Beethoven string quartets on Parnassus is a knockout), and chamber music clearly runs through her veins; her partnership with the fleet-fingered Peter Miyamoto is electric. Those moments when she gets to soar in the Duo are special, too: interior, cadenza-like musings, with her Guadagnini violin singing and whispering into our ears.— Colin Clarke

Kenneth Fuchs’s Piano Concerto (2016) is subtitled Spiritualist and is inspired by the paintings of Helen Frankenthaler. As the composer admits, there is no avant-garde abstraction in this splendidly earthbound piece. The outer movements are sprightly and joyous, the central framed by a sensitive Gymnopedie too romantic for Satie and interrupted by playful reminiscence of the first movement. The language is crisply American and brilliantly orchestrated.

Mr Biegel is impressive. This is a musthave for anyone still wondering where the best composers are in our country today. This is a joy.

Poems of Life (2017) are 12 poems by Judith G Wolf for countertenor and orchestra dealing with death and reminiscence. Moving evocations of life slipping away with lyrical beauty and sadness are beautifully sung by Mr Cohen, matched with Ms Falletta’s typically sensitive contribution.

Glacier (2015) is a concerto for electric guitar and orchestra. In five evocative movements on impressions of Montana’s natural wonders, these are effective tone poems. I’m delighted that the electric guitar does not distract from the expressive pictures, staying away from unnecessary blues and rock inflections. There are touches of sound effects, but they are not distracting. Credit to Mr Fuchs’s unerring taste.

Rush (2012) is a concerto for alto sax and orchestra. The music is mostly dreamlike. As is so often the case with such pieces there are too many cadenzas. It ends with a dance finale that would make a nice ballet.

The Piano Concerto is the main event — very much worth your time. I loved it, as I do most of this composer’s work these days. Don’t miss this. Brilliant performances, good sound, notes by the composer.— Allen Gimbel

Kenneth Fuchs (b. 1956) is a prolific American composer and professor of music composition at the University of Connecticut. He is a longtime friend and artistic collaborator of conductor JoAnn Falletta; this is the fifth album of Fuchs’s music that Falletta has recorded with the London Symphony on Naxos. This collection features Poems of Life, an eighteen-minute song cycle for countertenor and orchestra to poems by Judith G. Wolf.

Fuchs has arranged twelve of Wolf’s poems into five movements. The flow from one poem to the next within each movement is seamless, both musically and thematically. Collectively, Wolf’s poems traverse an emotional arc from the death of a loved one to spiritual transcendence. Fuchs shapes the cycle skillfully, starting with solo voice, then adding incrementally to the instrumentation. The countertenor, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, begins “Ethereal” with a pleasantly arching a cappella melody, a good depiction of the opening phrase (“A wisp of thought”). A solo cello answers the vocal line, then voice and cello counterpoint continues into the second poem, “Time Slips Away.” Nussbaum Cohen’s attractive, gently pulsating countertenor intertwines beautifully with Tim Hugh’s rich, singing cello tone.

That’s the Prologue. In Movement I, Fuchs introduces English horn and strings. Wolf’s poems clearly inspire Fuchs to creative tone painting, and he shows imagination within his primarily conservative harmonic sound world. Augmented seconds suggest exoticism, which is later reinforced by the gentle Ravelian swirls of “Watching for Death,” as more of the orchestra gradually joins in. The orchestra swells marvelously at the end of this poem. In the next one, “Face,” the harmony becomes more penetrating and pungent, but softens suitably on “It is lonely there / but comforting.” Nussbaum Cohen is subtle and expressive, with cushiony, admirably consistent tone that resonates comfortably with Fuchs’s lush orchestrations. In Movement II, “Forever Gone” veers into slushiness, but that may have been hard to avoid with lines like “Borne by gentle breezes / coasting on a down draft.” Fuchs goes back to solo voice for the Epilogue, then brings in expressive strings for the last poem, “Epiphany,” right on the word “God.” He pulls one last bit of piquant harmony out for the last line, “Am I dead or merely dreaming?”

The disc also features a set of three concertos. The piano concerto, subtitled “‘Spiritualist’ (After Three Paintings by Helen Frankenthaler),” is fully diatonic for most of its running time, but has some welcome tangy interjections in the second and third movements. Glacier, the electric guitar concerto, isn’t driving or grinding in the exciting way one might imagine; possibly the title may have been a clue to this. Happily, it becomes edgy and syncopated toward the end of the fourth movement, complete with a solo break and distorted riffs.

Timothy McAllister delivers unusually pure and sweet tone in the cadenzas of Rush, the alto saxophone concerto. Pianist Jeffrey Biegel and guitarist D. J. Sparr also provide expert performances in their respective solo pieces. Falletta shows a clear affinity throughout for Fuchs’s warm, spacious, neo-Romantic idiom, and the LSO responds with lush yet pristine playing.— Joshua Rosenblum

Violinist Julie Rosenfeld and pianist Peter Miyamoto have produced a stunning CD for Albany Records, New Music for Violin and Piano, which is a must-own for professional violinists and collaborative pianists scouting fresh repertoire. Both artists are on the faculty at the University of Missouri School of Music–Columbia and have enjoyed extensive careers singly and more recently, as a duo.

When the College of Arts and Science at UM offered start up funds for a CD of original works to celebrate her joining the music faculty in 2014, Rosenfeld wasted no time, commissioning music from several composers she knows well including Kenneth Fuchs….

After additional funds were raised to cover costs including the superb sound engineering services of five-time GRAMMY Award-winning producer Judith Sherman, the first recording sessions began in April 2017. Released by Albany in 2018 the result is a wide-ranging and superbly eclectic set of six new masterpieces for violin and piano duo composed between 2014 and 2016.

Uniquely American in temperament and color Kenneth Fuchs’ Duo for Violin and Piano (2015) is alive with simple yet glorious imagery. A solo reverie for fiddle in the middle of the piece becomes nimbus — starlight, cosmos, infinity — then morphs with an increasingly intoxicating pulse and lilt into a joyous narrative of ecstasy; a significant, challenging and extremely beautiful new addition to the repertoire.

•••

Considering all six works were commissioned specifically for violinist Rosenfeld and each is receiving its world premiere on this disc, the listener comes away satisfied the interpretations are definitive. Superb technical authority and a subtlety of collaborative ensemble playing between Rosenfeld and Miyamoto bring a bracing energy and excitement to these virtuoso new works.— Daniel Kepl

This latest Fuchs/Naxos disc, marking 15 years of his recording with conductor Falletta, bears real gems. The animated piano concerto is a delightful flight of fancy.    — MB

What a blithe spirited work is Fuchs' Piano Concerto. The first movement bears the same name as the work as a whole. It breathes joy and does so slowly. This is alternated with passages of intoxicating and breathless zest. Bringing an "innocent ear" to the listening room, I found the music freewheelingly enjoyable. I came to this conclusion knowing that all three movements, each of which bears the name of one of Helen Frankenthaler’s paintings (Spiritualist, Silent Wish, Natural Answer), were inspired by Frankenthaler’s visual images.

Crudely, and that's all I can manage, the idiom is like a gentle mix of lambent Ravel and 1940s pastoral Copland. The second movement is a sort of self-hypnotic Gymnopédie but every now and then the composer throws in a stone and the ripples produce wild and whooping results. Natural Answer marks a return to the foot-tapping exuberance of the first movement. The superb recording facilitates an equally superb work. Apart from the intrinsic joys of this sensationally attractive music the disc has also introduced me to this painter and her work. Strange how music has, for me, often been the key to appreciation and knowledge of the other arts; poetry, novels and paintings/illustrations.

•••

Poems of Life is an unusually scored song-cycle for counter-tenor, cello, cor anglais and orchestra….

Counter-intuitively, these twelve poems by Judith G. Wolf are arranged and sequenced in five movements. The weave of voice, cello and cor anglais is nicely calculated in a work that speaks in the sort of idiom that would have appealed to Samuel Barber, Geoffrey Bush and Carey Blyton. The plotline of the poems deals with vulnerability and loss in an affecting way. The songs follow each other in a continuum. Interesting that JoAnn Falletta introduced Fuchs to Wolf and that this work arises from a commission from the poet. The words are given in full in the leaflet — a good move, although there is no obstacle to understanding in the way that Cohen shapes the words as he sings them.

The composer tells us that each movement of Glacier (his Electric Guitar Concerto) "is based on my aural conception of the natural elements in Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park." The music is once again quietly shaped and appealingly paced. Across the five movements Fuchs keeps faith with the guitar's plangent role. Going to the Sun, the last movement, is not the rip-roaring tempest you might have expected. Instead we get a Tranquillo "a musical ode to the scenic Going-to-the-Sun Road in northwest Montana". The music ends, as Prospero might have wished, "rounded with a sleep".

•••

The electric guitar is a fairly unusual presence in classical circles. George Crumb used it in Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death, Frank Martin's Villon setting, Poèmes de la Mort (1969-71) is for male voices and electric guitars, three of each. John Buller's Proença, a commission for the Proms Jubilee season in 1977, is scored for mezzo, electric guitar and large orchestra. I would also mention the Birmingham-based British composer Andrew Downes who has written a fantastic virile concerto for acoustic guitar, electric guitar and orchestra.

Rush — a concerto for alto saxophone in two movements — again slips kindly, quietly and modestly into our listening space. There's no brazen lapel-grabbing and shaking. In that sense it's rather akin to the glistening peaceful passages of Michael Nyman's Where the Bee Dances, in the masterly hands and breath control of John Harle or Jess Gillam. The second movement (finale) while not a stranger to peace has a preponderance of intricately patterned wild and woolly virtuosity — Gershwin meets Schuman. Now there's a thought: a saxophone concerto by William Schuman. As for Fuchs' finale it is more bustling gregarious Waterfront than sleepy peaceful Quiet City.

•••

The liner notes could hardly be more authoritative. They are by Fuchs himself and only merit a thumbs down because they do not detail the dates and other details of these comparatively recent works' premieres. That said, all the minutiae are there, one way or another, on the composer's website. The Naxos booklet comes in English complete with profiles of all the works, artists and the composer and the words of all twelve of Wolf's poems.— Rob Barnett

The song-cycle Poems of Life (2017) is the heart of this well-played, sumptuously scored programme. Setting 12 poems by Judith G Wolf about love, grief and emotional and spiritual progression, the cycle is cast as a triptych with framing prologue and epilogue. The 12 poems are dispersed unevenly between these sections, within which they flow seamlessly. It is a beautifully conceived cycle, the music tender and rich, the solo cellist and cor anglais (the wonderful Tim Hugh and Christine Pendrill) amplifying respectively the persona of the countertenor in the songs and his lost beloved. Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen sang the premiere in Virginia and has the work fully under his skin; the accompaniment by the LSO is first-rate.

So is their playing in the three concertos, too, their experience of Fuchs’s style from four previous albums (recorded between 2004 and 2014; this newcomer was set down in August 2017) showing. The concertos are all very different in format, with only that for piano, Spiritualist (2016) – named after the first of three paintings by Helen Frankenthaler – using the regular fast-slow-fast template. The Piano Concerto is a deftly constructed set of responses to Frankenthaler’s paintings (Silent Wish, which inspired the central movement, adorns the booklet cover), but I do not think it communicates quite the depth of artistic debt to the painter about which Fuchs writes eloquently in the booklet, despite the virtuoso advocacy of Jeffrey Biegel (for whom it was written).

Glacier (2015) is a suite in five picturesque movements for electric guitar inspired by Montana’s national parks, while Rush is a rather Bernsteinian diptych for alto saxophone with a punchy, roof-raising final passacaglia. Both soloists are exemplary. Naxos’s sound is terrific. — Guy Rickards

The album opens with the Piano Concerto ‘Spiritualist’ (2016). Fuchs has written three earlier pieces that took inspiration from the art of Helen Frankenthaler. For this concerto, he has used a more traditional three-movement form, with modified sonata-allegro first movement, and rondo forms for the subsequent movements. The titles of the movements refer to the paintings which inspired the work: Spiritualist, Silent Wish, and Natural Answer. The first movement has a wonderful sense of play and an opening rhythmical theme that invites the listener in to the soundworld. A contrasting lyrical idea has some lovely writing as well in a Neo-Romantic swath of beauty. The style here is in a modern Americana feel with hints of jazz rhythms and syncopations (an update to some of Antheil’s mid-century works). The central movement opens with sparse string clusters and a piano theme that sets up a reflective Nocturne-like idea. There is a feel of Satie here in this reduced orchestral accompaniment that requires careful harmonic sway against the piano. A more energetic burst breaks this with brass glissandi that brings us closer to jazz styles with a dash of serialism. The music is quite gorgeous though in these reflective moments. They are interrupted by an almost Stravinskian flurry. Ideas from the previous movements are revisited in the airy and exciting celebration of the final movement. Pianist Jeffrey Biegel, for whom the work was written, is an exemplary choice in this engaging concerto. It has an almost filmic drama with accessible musical language that makes it an excellent entry into this program.

The poetry of Judith G. Wolf, taken from her collection Otherwise, serves as the narrative for Poems of Life (2017). Twelve poems are spread across this five-movement work for Countertenor and Orchestra. Solos for cello and English horn provide additional dramatic connotations for the piece and play off the soloist’s declarations. Texts are provided in the booklet. The quality of the voice here is the most striking aspect of the work with Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen’s pure tone adding an almost ethereal quality to the lines here. He premiered the work with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and brings that experience fully to bear here in this recording which is a real showcase for his talent. His phrasing and ability to shape the emotional quality of the text works to bring out the stark writing Fuchs uses here. Truly, this is really a special work with its sparse orchestral backdrop adding just enough fascinating brushstrokes to Wolf’s thoughtful poetry.

As there are not a lot of works for countertenor and orchestra, there are likely even fewer solo concert pieces for the Electric guitar. Fuchs wrote Glacier (2015) for the Bozeman Symphony Orchestra. The five movement work, with its evocative natural world titles, explores the vistas of Montana. Here too Fuchs blends jazz harmonies and rhythmic ideas with a sort of Post-Impressionist feel. The semi-improvisational style of the soloist is placed against the rich orchestral writing that follows along the lines of the nocturne-like qualities one heard in the piano concerto. It is fascinating to hear these alongside some of the unique riffs and techniques that are applied in the soloist. Fuchs takes us on a musical journey that visits the glaciers, and water as it travels in rivulets and vapors, as well as stone. The final movement has us heading further West into the sun. The music tends to be generally more reflective and restrained with some bursts of energy in the fourth movement, which has a rock guitar-like style. D. J. Sparr makes for a fine soloist in this work focusing more on some of the lyrical qualities of the instrument.

The alto saxophone has been more fortunate when it comes to concert music. Fuch’s concerto, Rush (2012), is a two-movement piece that is set into “Evening” and “Morning” respectively. This allows for some of the more rhapsodic style for the beautiful beginning movement which also sets up the primary material for the work. With excellent virtuosic writing, Fuchs then shifts between the jazz and classical worlds. Blues injections connect to the former while a later passacaglia blends the two worlds. Timothy McAllister is matched well for this work and makes it really shine from its gorgeous lyricism to its more exciting technical requirements in the finale.

Fuchs’ music is instantly engaging with a thread that continues American concert music out of the warmer Romantic tradition with integration of jazz here and there as a tool in the colorful music. Fuchs studied with Milton Babbit, David Diamond, and Vincent Persichetti. It is from Diamond’s romantic writing that one can see the connecting thread coupled with the sort of flashes of orchestral color heard in his other teachers here, with perhaps a hint of Leonard Bernstein along the way. All of this melded into his own compositional voice. The pieces here are all quite engaging works. The Poems of Life feels like the stronger of the works with the piano concerto a close second. Still, it is all a fabulous recording of new music excellently performed by the respective soloists with equally fine support from the London Symphony as one would suspect.
RECORDING    PERFORMANCE    — Steven A. Kennedy

The American composer Kenneth Fuchs now has quite a sizeable discography of his music on Naxos, invariably played by the LSO who have played a major role in inspiring him to write for the orchestra with impressive authority and imagination. The latest volume, out today, includes a piano concerto but also a lovely work for electric guitar and orchestra, Glacier — it’s atmospheric, written and performed with great flair in a highly approachable idiom. Fuchs writes music that LSO plays with total grasp of the idiom (it’s not a million miles away from film music in colour, and JoAnn Falletta understands the style perfectly). — James Jolly

Last week’s playlist included a new work by the American composer Kenneth Fuchs, Glacier – the only reason I didn’t alight on his Piano Concerto is that I already had a striking piano concerto by Mendelssohn. So this week I am including the Fuchs Piano Concerto, played with terrific authority by Jeffrey Biegel and with some gorgeous sounds from the LSO. — James Jolly

For those who are unfamiliar with the music of Kenneth Fuchs this new release in Naxos’ American Classics series provides a wonderful introduction. This is, in fact, the fifth album of Fuchs’s music to be released in the above series and all have been performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of JoAnn Falletta.

This release contains four works: Piano Concerto “Spiritualist”, Poems of Life, Glacier and Rush. The opening piano concerto is in three movements each of which represents a large-scale painting by Helen Frankenthaler. The final movement, with its jazzy syncopations and barnstorming finale is particularly successful. The excellent soloist Jeffrey Biegel copes with the technical demands of the work with impressive mastery and relates to the orchestra perfectly.

This is followed by the song-cycle Poems of Life (2017) is based on Twelve Poems by Judith G. Wolf. This is sung by the counter-tenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen who also performed the work at its premiere.

Glacier is a truly delightful virtuoso concerto, for electric guitar and orchestra, inspired by the sweeping vistas of Montana. It is a five movement work; each of which is based on the composer’s aural conception of the natural elements in Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park: Glacier, Rivulets, Vapor, Stone and Going to the Sun. The last movement being a musical ode to the scenic Going-to-the-Sun Road in northwest Montana. On hearing this work, in a first rate performance from both the electric guitarist D. J. Sparr and the London Symphony Orchestra, one cannot help but wonder why more composers have not conceived concertos for the electric guitar and orchestra.

The recording is rounded off by a third concerto, Rush, for alto saxophone. Once again we get first rate performances from soloist Timothy McAllister and the orchestra.

This is an outstanding recording both in terms of the excellent Naxos engineering and the quality of the soloists, orchestra and conductor. JoAnn Falletta and the London Symphony Orchestra seem to gain a closer affinity with the music of Kenneth Fuchs with each new release. All music lovers should give this album a try — Kenneth Fuchs is a master of orchestration and he writes tonal music of great imagination, some of which is not too far removed from film music.

iClassical rating:  

With the latest release of recent orchestral works Kenneth Fuchs reaffirms his stature as one of the US’s very most distinguished living composers. We hear four works on Piano Concerto "Spiritualist" (and other works) (Naxos 8.559824) and immerse ourselves in masterful and vivid scoring-orchestrations and inventions. All of the music literally lifts itself out of your speakers and enters your musical self in ways increasingly riveting the more you listen.

Perhaps like Aaron Copland before him, there is a pronounced feeling of US locality in this music, though none of it is programmatic in that way. The music resounds with a clarity of purpose and in the end a kind of spirit of the New World. It isn't though that you should listen for quotations from old folk songs or the like, because they are not put into the music. So in that sense this is not really Nationalist fare. But in various ways the contemporary vernacular music playing in our heads is always somehow near, perhaps just around the corner.

The soloists and the London Symphony Orchestra under conductor JoAnn Falletta make of these World Premiere Recordings something definitive and exemplary, though as ever in these instances other recordings will no doubt in time highlight an aspect or two we might not now be looking for. That does not matter for us at the moment. For this program brings us the music in a shining light.

The album features three new concertos and a song cycle. All stand out as very worthy new examples of the orchestral art.

The program begins with the “Piano Concerto ‘Spiritualist’ (After Three Paintings by Helen Frankenthaler)” (2016). The late painter's Color-Field brilliance is aptly and effectively put into musical terms in a buoyant and bouncingly boisterous romp. The solo piano part has a pronounced momentum that translates the visual into the aural with ultra-pianistic means. The orchestral parts follow the mood with a real presence.

"Poems of Life (Twelve Poems by Judith G. Wolf for Countertenor and Orchestra)" (2017) changes the mood to one of contemplative retrospection, with a feeling of loss and then a spiritual regeneration. The countertenor role, sung brilliantly by Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, takes center stage and retains it throughout, with orchestral mists, hues and refracted colors enhancing the poetic mode. It is a music of wonder and experience I suppose you might say. Beautiful.

The Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra, entitled "Glacier" (2015), makes beautiful use of the electric instrument in idiomatic ways, with even a nod to Metal stylistics. The overall feeling for the music is a kind of majestic pointedness. The orchestral part is resonant with color and melodic punch.

The final work, "Rush (Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra)" (2012) concludes the program on a rousing note.

For the moment we have the latest work of Kenneth Fuchs in a major new release. It is in every way a great thing, in performance quality, sound quality and quality and variety of compositions. If you do not know Fuchs's music this is the perfect chance to become familiar. If you already do it is a valuable addition to your New Music library. Highly recommended.

Kenneth Fuchs’s ‘Duo in One Movement’ is vibrant, catchy, and full of ecstatic joy.

Kenneth Fuchs’ Brass Quintet No. 2 “American” lit a fire under the players’ virtuosity, with rapidly moving, colorful and delightfully accessible writing that never flagged. It was so good I wished they had played the entire 12 minutes over again.   — Harvey Steiman

Important new American piano concerto première in Wheeling. A break from the French repertoire brought pianist Jeffrey Biegel to the stage to present the première of the Piano Concerto by Kenneth Fuchs, completed in 2016, the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra being one of two co-commissioning orchestras presenting première performances.

Fuchs’ music is immediately accessible — rooted in tonality but sounding contemporary. Like other contemporary American composers such as Richard Danielpour and Roberto Sierra, he is not afraid to write in an idiom that speaks to the heart as well as the head.

Subtitled “Spiritualist,” the new piano concerto is in three movements, each inspired by an abstract painting by the American artist Helen Frankenthaler. The first movement, after the painting “Spiritualist,” has a bright palette and features several themes that could be described as “striving.” The movement ends quietly, followed by the next one inspired by the painting “Silent Wish.” This is the emotional centerpiece of the concerto, evoking the human desire for simplicity and beauty in the face of harsh reality. This beauty/simplicity was characterized by solo piano phrases reminiscent of Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies, contrasted by outbursts by the full orchestra, replete with brass and percussion ejaculations of sound. The movement ends quietly but on a seemingly unresolved note, leading to the final movement inspired by the painting “Natural Answer.” Here, the “striving” themes of the first movement return, accompanied by jaunty, syncopated piano writing that conveys a sense of optimism and good spirits. The concerto ends with an exhilarating flourish.

Jeffrey Biegel’s performance was impressive. Clearly, he has the full measure of this music, manifested by technical mastery, effective contrasts and tight alignment with the orchestra. On the basis of tonight’s performance and the warm audience reception, it is easy to imagine this work joining the ranks of important contemporary American concertante works.   — Phillip Nones

Songs of Innocence and Experience is an early work, written whilst Kenneth Fuchs was studying at the University of Miami. “The Lamb” has been set many times by different composers, and Fuchs’s setting is as successful as most, and more successful than many thanks to the delightful tune he fashioned and the apposite scoring for the accompanying group of flute, oboe, cello and harp. The setting of “Spring” works just as well, and for the same reasons. “Holy Thursday” is a bitter indictment of child poverty, though with a ray of hope at the end. The instrumental group is less well suited to these sentiments, but Fuchs felicitously manages his material, and this is also a successful setting. It is almost inevitable that a young composer would want to set “The Tyger,” just as he would want to experiment with serial technique, in contrast to the tonal language employed elsewhere. The lines are declaimed rather than sung, and we should not be too harsh in judging the composer, himself stronger on innocence than experience at that time, if he wasn’t quite equal to the task of providing a worthy vehicle for Blake’s monumental words.

Composed some 30 years later, Movie House is a cycle of seven songs to poems by John Updike. The voice is again accompanied by a chamber ensemble, of three winds, three strings and harp. Writing in the booklet, the composer tells us that he was immediately attracted to Updike’s literary voice when he first encountered it, and that one of the features that encouraged him to set these poems was their “optimistic evocations of life during the 1950s,” the decade of Fuchs’s birth. Reading the poems, even one who has never experienced American life of that period can certainly see what he means; such is the power of good writing. Fuchs’s style, though clearly evolved since the Blake settings, remains basically tonal with a pleasing sweetness quite appropriate to the poems. The writing for the accompanying group is unfailingly inventive, drawing a range of colour that is frequently put to subtle use in illustrating aspects of the words. The vocal lines are less distinctive, accompanying the text very satisfactorily, but rarely giving the impression of having grown out of it. This highly attractive work put me in mind of Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, though Fuchs can’t quite rival Barber’s masterly evocation of time and place.

Fuchs completed Falling Man in 2010. The text is taken from the eponymous novel by Don DeLillo that deals with the 2004 terrorist atrocity on the World Trade Center. The work is a dramatic scena — Barber comes to mind again — for baritone and orchestra. The words are powerful, and describe the moment that the deeply shocked protagonist escapes from the doomed building. The orchestral writing is brilliant, both in the accompaniment and in several purely orchestral interludes, with countless touches that add to the drama and pathos of the story. The vocal writing is again on a less exalted level, with much stepwise movement that one presumes is deliberate but which is also limiting. The musical language is more advanced than elsewhere in the programme, with the harshest dissonances reserved for those passages describing the violence of the scene, whereas reflective moments return to the composer’s habitual sweetness. This is a powerful work with a particularly effective, and rather shocking, close. Others must decide where it lies in respect of the events it attempts to deal with.

I assume that the chamber groups are made up of members of the London Symphony Orchestra. The playing in all three works is magnificent, and the orchestral accompaniment to Falling Man under JoAnn Falletta, in particular, will have thrilled the composer. Roderick Williams sings with all the vocal beauty and power, and with the same care to vary his vocal colour according to the demands of the text and the music, to which we are accustomed from his many earlier recordings. The engineering is very fine, with exemplary balance. All three works are receiving their first recordings here, and Naxos, supported by a number of sponsors, has done them proud. Refreshingly direct and straightforward notes are provided by the composer, and the sung texts are all printed in the booklet.   — William Hedley

An unsettling dramatic scena called Falling Man (written in 2009-10 and based on text from Don DeLillo’s novel of the same name about 9/11) opens this set of three song cycles by Kenneth Fuchs (M.M. ’83, D.M.A. ’88, composition). Fuchs uses DeLillo’s sober descriptions (“A man seated on the sidewalk, coughing up blood”) to create raw and powerful results. The unnerving narrative is also a showcase for the dulcet baritone of Roderick Williams (featured in all three works) and the keenly attentive playing of the London Symphony Orchestra, led by JoAnn Falletta (M.M. ’83, D.M.A. ’89, orchestral conducting). Williams shows extraordinary tonal control while articulating each syllable; often I didn’t even need to refer to the texts provided in the booklet.

In Movie House (2007), Fuchs deploys a luxurious array of orchestral colors to illuminate seven John Updike poems from 1963. As Fuchs writes, the texts have “a nostalgic quality that seems both ironic and poignant,” and his instrumental writing, tonal with a pleasing chromaticism, makes a fine foil for them. The title track contains some of Updike’s haunting comparisons (“the size of the great rear wall measures/the breadth of the dreams we have had here.”), followed by the striking “Modigliani’s Death Mask” (“Preserved inside its glass case like/An oddly favored grapefruit rind”). In each poem, Fuchs has a talent for setting words with natural cadences and Williams for luscious tone. In the final set, four joyous poems from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience inspired Fuchs to use simpler, lighter scoring. Flute fans, rejoice: the freshness of “The Lamb” and “Spring” relies heavily on that instrument, and the set concludes with Williams enjoying himself with a bit of sprechstimme for “The Tyger.”

The gorgeous sound is thanks to engineer Jonathan Allen, who recorded all three works at the famed Abbey Road Studios in London.   — Bruce Hodges

The winning song cycles by Kenneth Fuchs on this new disc show how far the American composer has come — yet how constant he has remained — since his student days in the 1970s. The earliest cycle, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, setting poems by William Blake, bears traces of Britten, down to the presence of a text the British composer set in his own cycle, Songs and Proverbs of William Blake.

Although he writes in a tonal style that occasionally resembles Britten’s aesthetic, Fuchs claims his own expressive warmth and colour. Words are always discernible, a manifestation both of graceful and urgent shaping of vocal lines and judicious orchestration. Fuchs’s Blake songs (1977) are brief and full of telling incident; the text in the final piece, ‘The Tyger’, is declaimed partly in Sprechstimme fashion.

Like the Blake cycle, Movie House (2007), setting poems by John Updike, is scored for baritone and chamber ensemble. Here, too, Fuchs conjures glowing evocations of the words while adding atmosphere and nuance through a small contingent of instruments.

The aura is more dramatic, as it naturally would be, in Falling Man (2009–10), a series of interludes and arias (to texts by Don DeLillo, from his 2007 novel of the same name) about the experiences of a 9/11 survivor. Amid Brittenesque lyricism, Fuchs musters ferocity and pungency as the tragedy unfolds.

The performances are exemplary, from baritone Roderick Williams’s commanding artistry to the bold, fresh playing of the London Symphony Orchestra under JoAnn Falletta's sensitive direction.   — Donald Rosenberg

September 11, 2001 was a day never to be forgotten. It was unspeakably devastating, and a tragically surreal day for all who witnessed the events unfold. I was there that day, hearing incessant sirens, watching in disbelief as the North Tower crumbled, smelling the stench and wandering in all directions trying to escape the reality.... Such is the subject matter with which the music on this disc intends to grapple. Based on Don DeLlllo’s post-9/11 novel Falling Man, the eponymous song cycle composed by Kenneth Fuchs is a stunning work that truly encapsulates the ineffable experiences of that day. Fuchs’ music supports but never overshadows baritone Roderick Williams. You can hear every gripping word of the sung narrative. The London Symphony’s superb accompaniment is under the excellent direction of JoAnn Falletta. With Falling Man, Fuchs has written what for me is the defining musical memorial of 9/11. The music has the grace and strength needed for such a work.

There are two other song cycles filling out this wonderful disc. One is based on the poems of John Updike and the other one on poetry of William Blake. Fuchs is one of the great composers of our time, composing music that is expressive, beautiful and broadly tonal. The Updike piece, 2007’sMovie House, is based on the writer’s second volume of poetry. Again, the songs are set for baritone, this time supported by a chamber ensemble. The poems are brilliantly set. They evoke a different time and feeling: the 1950’s. Williams singing in his dramatic best captures the mood and meaning of these poems.

One of his earliest works, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, was composed in 1977 while Fuchs was still in college. One can see and hear the roots of his great future music. These songs, settings of Blake texts from 1794, also employ the baritone voice with chamber ensemble. The work includes Blake’s marvelous poem ‘The Tyger,’ which is the pinnacle piece for this interesting and sensitive set. It is a fascinating work bordering on the atonal, making frequent use of the 12 tone scale.

This disc is well worth owning for the music and the works show off the best in contemporary classical music. Williams is an outstanding baritone and we are lucky to hear him on these works. This release was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in 2013. The sound quality of the disc, as on most Naxos issues, is outstanding. I hope that Fuchs continues to compose such interesting and wonderful music in the future.   — Jeffrey Tarlow

It was through an accident of timing, rather than by design, that I got to hear the haunting composition Falling Man, by Kenneth Fuchs, on September 11, 2014. Based on the 9/11 novel by Don DeLillo, the music immediately evokes comparisons with John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls, the brilliant tribute to the victims of the World Trade Centre terrorist attack. Where Adams wrote music that is elegiac and impossibly transcendent, Fuchs offers a much more personal reflection, tender and almost dazed in the aftermath of disaster. Though structurally dodecaphonic, the music does not strictly adhere to any blueprint, delivering lyrical and nearly romantic themes of a personal heartbreak in the face of a very public tragedy.

A champion of Fuchs’ music, JoAnn Falletta conducts the LSO brilliantly; but the real star of this recording is Roderick Williams, whose soft, velvety baritone belies the harsh descriptions of falling ash and human artifacts raining down on Wall Street that horrible morning. The companion pieces on the album, based on poems by John Updike and William Blake, including the incomparable “Tyger,” do not reveal such immediate connection with our recent past and deserve to be listened to on their own, within a different context.   — Robert Thomas

Composer Kenneth Fuchs continues his fruitful relationship with conductor JoAnn Falletta and the London Symphony Orchestra on this new disc from Naxos Records. The fourth collaboration between the composer and the conductor features an accessible triad of world premieres, comprised of two 21st century compositions, and a song cycle from 1977.

The opening piece is the title track, "Falling Man." Adapted by J. D. McClatchy from the 2007 novel by Don DeLillo, the text is an excerpt in which a businessman, having just escaped the World Trade Centers on 9/11, struggles to understand this new state of existence. Written for baritone voice and orchestra just five years ago, Fuchs’ music expertly conveys the man’s experiences during this climactic period in our history. The LSO ably supports Fuchs’ work under Falletta’s baton through both the fragile accompanying sections and the three instrumental interludes.

The second work is a seven-song cycle for baritone voice and chamber ensemble utilizing the poetry of John Updike. Titled "Movie House," Fuchs has painted a cinematic series of songs that wonderfully contribute to his canon. The septet allows a variety of colors to come forth underneath Updike words, and are particularly effective on "Maples in a Spruce Forest," and the first text of the cycle, "Telephone Poles."

The final selection is a relatively short series of four songs, also for baritone voice and chamber ensemble, devised from William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience.”

Roderick Williams is the soloist on all the selections. Williams’ performance on “Falling Man,” in particular, vividly portrays both the eerie horror and the chaos of that horrific day, as told through DeLillo’s novel, while he is in complete control throughout the other two song cycles.

The fascinating liner notes contained in the disc are provided by the composer himself, and give insightful information about his process and his interest in the works contained. This is a wonderfully recorded disc that should continue to gain Fuchs the notoriety he so deserves.   — Steven Bergman

Anyone living life around New York especially will no doubt recall exactly what they were doing and their experiences on the morning of 9/11. Those outside the immediate area will do the same, but perhaps with less of the kinetic shock those nearby felt. It was a horribly defining moment for many of us, a moment that changed everything one way or another, for some a loss of personal innocence, a rite de passage into an afterward at least initially of twilight and loss.

Composer Kenneth Fuchs has come to terms with this via Don DeLillo’s novel centering around the tragedy and its aftermath, Falling Man. Fuchs has composed a number of works based on the theme, but now we get to experience the principal one.…

It is a moving work that sets to music the opening passages of DeLillo’s novel dealing directly with one man’s experience on the streets during ground zero. The baritone describes the horror of the scenes the character witnesses while the orchestra comments mournfully but even somewhat mysteriously, as in a dream, the unfolding of those moments.

It is a masterful work, in its own way a kind of analog to the Hindemith-Whitman work “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” on the horrors of the Civil War and the death of Lincoln. Both are requiems in their own way. Both filter the immediacy of the horrors through a mediation and meditation of poetics, music and memory.

Roderick Williams gives us a definitive performance that is seconded by the greatly poetic reading of the score by Falletta and the London Symphony.

Companion works on the disk contrast well. Both are also for baritone — and a pared-down chamber ensemble. The first, “Movie House” (2007), gives us a number of poems by John Updike that evoke vividly the optimism of the ’50s. Concluding the disk is “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” (1977), an earlier work based on the William Blake poems, including of course “The Tyger.” Both remove us from 9/11 by moving back in time, to two other eras with their different moods, and in a way to Blake summing up the process of knowing what one knows (or intuits) after the loss of innocence.…

Kenneth Fuchs sums up something about being alive right now in the three works taken together. He speaks to our age as a direct contemporary, neither overstating nor understating, bringing us a very musical-poetical portrayal of where we have been and where we are.

On that basis I would say that this disk is pretty near indispensible for those wanting the new music as it lives for us right now. Kenneth Fuchs captures that, and thanks to the beautiful performances we can live inside of it here, as we live the aftermath of what came before.    — Grego Applegate Edwards

Kenneth Fuchs’s chamber music release comes from Naxos and includes Falling Canons (Christopher O'Riley, piano), Falling Trio (Trio21), and String Quartet No. 5 "American" (Delray String Quartet). The Fifth Quartet, according to the composer, "is alternately lyrical and playful, sometimes brusque and muscular, at times elegiac, and it is meant to suggest the resilience and brash optimism of the American spirit." It has a subdued, sweet beginning with a gorgeous theme. At about three minutes in, it starts dancing—almost a little hoedown, but the sheer loveliness of it keeps things mellow. One almost wonders if it will dissolve in its own beauty—this glittering, luminous sound. The second movement contains an insinuating, insistent, almost obsessive theme that is passed from instrument to instrument—done pizzicato on the cello—with a doleful melody cast across it that fails to subdue this nervous scherzo. The third movement starts with a pained utterance in several chords. Then Fuchs returns to the exquisite opening theme, but casts it more darkly and somberly. Now the violin begins a sad little dance, which stops, then starts again. It is a bit like some of Shostakovich's Jewish-inspired quartet writing. The dance dissolves, and the obsessive melody from the scherzo reappears, followed by a moving lament. Everything that has happened so far in this Quartet seems to be gathered up in this movement, including motivic elements of the Falling Man theme. Its wildness and sense of immediacy once again recall Janacek. The closing allegro begins exuberantly. The spirited double fugue of the last movement is a thrilling tour de force of counterpoint and melody. It banishes the preceding sadness. This is jubilant music that fulfills Fuchs’s purpose of affirmation. The Fifth is one of the finest quartets of the past several decades — American or otherwise.

There is little in contemporary music that is as directly expressive as the music of Kenneth Fuchs. It goes right to the heart and stays there. If you think America’s song has already been sung, you need to listen to this.   — Robert R. Reilly

Let's cut to the chase. Yes, the titles may seem abstract, and yes, this is the dreaded contemporary music, but this excellent Naxos album could go a long way in establishing Kenneth Fuchs as a legitimate voice in American music. We have here a piano suite, a string quartet, and a piano trio. Three distinct types of music, all expertly well done and very engaging as a whole.

Falling Canons grew out of a theme based on a work for baritone and [orchestra] following 9/11. Fuchs has taken one of his main themes and crafted a thought provoking set of seven movements for solo piano that explores the changes in the world following those terrorist attacks. It was composed specifically for the pianist here, Christopher O'Riley, and sounds marvelous. It's a truly effective 9/11 tribute by virtue of the fact that there is no text, just raw emotion that rises, then collapses, then rises again and so on.

The "American" String Quartet was commissioned by the Delray musicians, who are based in southern Florida. The composer suggests — the notes for this release are his own — that the quartet suggests the American spirit. It is my suggestion that you treat it as absolute music, although Fuchs is right in saying that he was heavily influenced by this country's symphonic history. There's a little bit of everything here, fun, nobility, and above all great art. The Delray play this work as anyone who has a work written for them should, with great care and obvious affection.

Trio21 includes cellist Robert deMaine, someone who I "grew up" with as a young Detroit Symphony patron. He, along with Jeffry Biegel and Kinga Augustyn, tackle Falling Trio, which shares themes with Falling Canons and the earlier work mentioned, Falling Man. Biegel commissioned this piece, and again the musical writing is striking. By not saying anything, Fuchs says everything. This 13-minute, one movement trio is just as hauntingly effective as the opening seven movements for piano, maybe more so due to the skillful and honest instrumental writing. If you're someone who winces at new music, or generally shies away from "American" music of this nature (tributes, etc), I suggest you try this disc. It's very good, and deserves your time, both for the excellence of the music on display, and for the commitment and obvious depth that the performers bring.    — Brian Wigman

Composer Kenneth Fuchs has enjoyed critical and commercial success over the past decade, thanks in part to his work with Naxos. Fuchs’s first release on the label — 2005’s An American Place — was nominated for two Grammy Awards, and the music itself compared favorably to that of John Adams, Fuchs’s contemporary and fellow countryman. The composer’s latest effort, which features work for solo piano and string ensemble, is in many ways a continuation of a creative endeavor which began in 2008. At that time, Fuchs started work on Falling Man, an extended setting for baritone voice and orchestra, which was based on author Don DeLillo’s powerful post–9/11 novel of the same name. Written over a period of two years, Falling Man musically organized the events of September 11, 2001, around a sequence of 12 descending pitches. This approach is revisited in the sparingly beautiful phrases of Falling Canons, seven piano movements that, as Fuchs himself notes, “explores the essence of the Falling Man theme on the keyboard within limited musical parameters.” Meanwhile, the recording’s title track, Fuchs’s fifth string quartet — known as ‘American’ — summons the spirit of its namesake subject matter with robust melodies and elegiac turns as grand as the country and people the music describes. Rousing.    — Chris Morgan

If you have been collecting the burgeoning ‘American Classics’ series on Naxos then the name of Kenneth Fuchs will not be new to you. He is one of America’s leading middle generation of composers. For example you may have come across his beautiful ‘Canticle to the Sun’ (Naxos 8.559335). There are other orchestral and choral works dotted about the catalogue (Naxos 8.559224) and Albany has also recorded him: a disc of String Quartets 2, 3 and 4 (TROY480).

The present disc begins with Falling Canons for solo piano. It is magically played by the amazingly versatile Christopher O’Riley also known as a jazz pianist and radio and TV presenter in America.

It was after reading the novel by Don DeLillo ‘Falling Man’ which took as its starting point a figure walking out of the rubble of 9/11 that Fuchs was moved to write a major work. This book stood as a starting point for a song-cycle for baritone and orchestra, ‘Falling Man.’ Once finished Fuchs, like other composers before him, discovered that some of the musical material and some of the philosophical ideas behind the piece needed to be further developed, hence this work, especially written for O’Riley.

Put simply, there are seven canons beginning on a B. The first is at the octave, the second pitched on A is at the second, the third pitched on G is at the third and so on. In addition, for example, canon 4 is in 4/2 canon, 5 in 5/8 canon, 6 in 6/8 and so forth. The Falling Man theme used from the song-cycle is the one deployed in this piano work. Although it seems to start in a somewhat cerebral manner it develops movingly and mysteriously to make a satisfying and thoughtful overall composition.

This disc also includes a Piano Trio entitled Falling Trio, which is also a set of seven variations and is from the same stable as ‘Falling Canons.’ The clear and interesting booklet notes by the composer tell us that the introductory Falling Man theme is based again on B then “the subsequent variations are based on successive ascending scalar passages” the opposite to the piano piece. This time these play without a break and so are not separately tracked. The language is often atonal and contrasted with the more aggressive and brittle moments there are two beautiful “reconciliatory” passages in a more romantic and diatonic vein in an attempt to “to reconcile the work’s tonal and non-tonal language.” I found the trio very moving right from the start and its length is just ideal for its material. The performance is given by the group, Trio21, which commissioned and first played it. What we hear has the complete feeling of total authority, both technically and musically.

In between these two items comes the much longer String Quartet No. 5 subtitled rather bravely, bearing in the mind the famous Dvořák quartet, ‘American.’ Like the Dvořák it is in four movements but there the similarities end as these have a variety of tempo alterations within them. How does a composer have something different to say in this form, which is already clogged up with too much great music?

In his first movement Fuchs adopts a concise sonata-form, the second subject of which is to be developed, alongside his Falling Man theme in the lyrically desolate and slow third movement. In between comes a skittish Scherzo. The exciting finale is a clever double fugue. The opening theme of the quartet is deliberately spacious and open and, as the composer readily admits, typically American in a Coplandish way. It possesses a beautiful lyrical line as a secondary idea after about 70 seconds. The writing is always attractive and idiomatic. As a whole there is an individuality about this music which makes one want to return to the work … and to hear the other four quartets. This is the highlight of the CD. The Delray Quartet were the commissioners and first performers. They clearly understand exactly what Fuchs’ intentions are. No composer could want more.

Apparently another disc of Kenneth Fuchs’s music is to appear next year on Naxos and will have the orchestral Falling Man work as its highlight.    — Gary Higginson

Kenneth Fuchs isn’t the only composer to fashion concert music from recycled operatic material. He’s not even the first American to use smaller pieces to promote bigger works (John Adams had pretty much announced Nixon in China with his 1985 orchestral ‘outtake’ The Chairman Dances). But few composers have gained as much mileage — or found greater range — than Fuchs’s ‘Falling’ works, which open and close this collection.

Taken from Falling Man, an extended scena for solo baritone and orchestra adapted by JD McClatchy from Don DeLillo’s post–9/11 novel, Fuchs’s Falling Canons (seven canons for solo piano) and Falling Trio (a single-movement set of variations for piano trio) sound as vibrant in performance as they look prosaic in description. The counterpoint unfolds with Hindemith–like clarity, leaving its respective performers — Christopher O’Riley and Trio21 — essentially to countermand the titles of the works and reach lyrically for the stars. I’m not sure what is so ‘American’ about Fuchs’s American String Quartet, by far the longest of the the three pieces here, though its relative freedom in structure establishes a clear emotional space between the ‘Falling’ works. Likewise, the exhilarating momentum of the Delray Quartet offers a welcome change from the intellectual rigor of O’Riley and the contemplative playing of Trio21.

According to Fuchs’s booklet–notes, Falling Man will be recorded for Naxos by baritone Roderick Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra under JoAnn Falletta. I don’t usually fall for such shameless promotion but I may just order myself an advance copy.    — Ken Smith

Hearing all three discs in succession is an object lesson for a critic: Many composers who may be initially pigeonholed prove on closer examination to have unsuspected breadth. Fuchs is certainly one, and is a musical discovery I have been delighted to make. As to the performances, they are without exception marvelous.… All three discs are confidently recommended to lovers of new music that has got something to say and does not go out of its way to be alienating.    — Phillip Scott

Fuchs writes in an arresting synthesis of stylistic elements proving that tonal music has much to yield in originality even many years after it began to be attacked by modern composers….    — David DeBoor Canfield

Kenneth Fuchs’s contributions, especially in the genres of orchestral and chamber music, are considerable and significant. The three CDs reviewed here represent but a small sampling of his work, but any one of them, or all three, are likely to whet your appetite for more. Performances and recordings couldn’t be better. Recommended, recommended, and recommended.    — Jerry Dubins

On Atlantic Riband:

Fuchs’s idiom is a most ingratiating mix of tonal harmonies, interesting sonorities and textures, and colorful writing.    — David DeBoor Canfield

On Divinum Mysterium:

Paul Silverstone, for whom Fuchs composed the concerto, plays magnificently, and … all violists should be grateful for the addition to their literature of such a handsome and deeply moving original work.    — Jerry Dubins

On String Quartet No. 5 (“American”):

Of Fuchs’s “American” String Quartet, I think I can honestly say that the opening movement may be one of the most drop-dead gorgeous things I’ve ever heard, and that I can’t think of another composer since Shostakovich who has drawn such sonorities from a string quartet. This is a masterpiece ….    — Jerry Dubins

On Falling Trio:

The concluding work on this CD, Falling Trio, was also inspired by Falling Man, and is cast in one continuous 13-minute movement that comprises seven distinct fantasy variations, also derived from the material in the vocal work. The work runs the gamut of emotions, ranging from grand gestures of arpeggiation over an A-Minor triad to dramatic rhythmic unison octaves in the lower range of the three instruments. It also, according to the notes, features a “reconciliation” theme that is interpolated into the proceedings twice, in which the instruments attempt to reconcile the work’s tonal and non-tonal musical language. This reviewer considers that this goal was met most successfully: The work succeeds brilliantly.    — David DeBoor Canfield

On Falling Canons:

Falling Canons is a suite for solo piano of seven canons, written for Christopher O’Riley, and is a tremendously impressive piece of music. Each of these canons is pitched at a different degree of the scale, and while octave doublings are not uncommon the whole work consists entirely of two-part counterpoint. The writing is as clean, rhythmically charged, and sharp-edged as the piano sonatas of Fuchs’s one-time teacher Persichetti; quite a compliment.    — Phillip Scott

On Kenneth Fuchs: String Quartets 2, 3, 4:

The American Quartet that presents these works is a first-class ensemble, possessed of impeccable intonation and phrasing. The group also produces, with the help of the composer needless to say, some remarkable string colors. This is a most enjoyable disc all around and, as with all the music here reviewed, receives an unqualified recommendation.    — David DeBoor Canfield

Redux. Kenneth Fuchs (pronounced fooks) studied with, among others, Milton Babbitt, David Diamond, and Vincent Persichetti. To some extent, all three left their mark — Diamond and Persichetti in the orchestral sound, Babbitt in a predilection for constructing scores from particular intervals. Like some in his generation, Fuchs (born in 1956) eschewed the postwar trends and went back to the American composers between the wars, like Piston and Copland, for inspiration. The music often has a “big-shoulder,” open-air quality to it, evoking epic Romantic vistas.

All of the works on this disc at least sound gorgeous.…

The overture Atlantic Riband sends a love letter to the glory days of American transatlantic ship travel.… Again, it's one of those pieces that Fuchs has constructed from a few intervals and chords — a use of minimal means to produce a maximal score.

To me, the one-movement viola concerto Divinum Mysterium is the big work on the program, and not just because of length. It shares many ideas with American Rhapsody, including the soloist arpeggiating on, this time, a ninth chord. However, the medieval Sanctus trope, known as the Divinum Mysterium, serves as its main building block. More may know it as the Christmas hymn “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.” Fuchs takes the tune for a walk through quiet gardens and barn dances…. The rhythmic sections get your blood moving, while the meditative ones retain point and intensity. The finale joins the long-limbed melodies with the rhythmic percolation. Fuchs tries for spiritual exaltation and without a lot of fuss brings it off.

Falletta's readings match the music. They let you know how good each score may be.… Divinum Mysterium gets a stellar account, aided largely by Paul Silverthorne, LSO principal viola and the score’s dedicatee. I've raved before about Silverthorne, who may be my all-time favorite violist. He has all the virtues I associate with intelligent, musically sensitive playing: an imaginative shaping of line, acute rhythm, awareness of his ideal place in an ensemble. Beyond this, however, he also has the ability to penetrate to the emotional core of whatever music he plays. In this case, he projects a mystical intensity. His isn't a one-size-fits-all approach, and he plays a wide range of music. His Brahms differs from his Lutyens which differs from his Shostakovich. He aims to speak in the composer’s voice, and to this end, he wants to understand the music’s architecture, as well as its rhetorical shape. I have no idea whether Fuchs’s concerto will last. Much depends on its adoption by violists. However, Silverthorne’s account recommends this work to others — listeners, conductors, and players alike.    — Steve Schwartz

All of the works here were composed specifically for the artists playing them, and the performances are accordingly totally committed. American pianist Christopher O’Riley gives a technically stunning, insightful reading of Falling Canons, while the Florida-based Delray Quartet play Fuchs’s most recent effort in the genre with great panache. As for Falling Trio, Fuchs wrote it for the Trio21's 2011–2 inaugural season. Consequently the work not only introduced the public to an exceptional new chamber ensemble, but also an outstanding contemporary addition to the piano trio literature.

Fuchs is so expert a composer that even the more-challenging aspects of his work — for both players and listeners — seem to flow logically from his concepts rather than to be created out of a misplaced sense of “necessary modernity.” Two of the works on the new Naxos CD trace to the same source: Fuchs’ Falling Man, written for baritone and orchestra in the aftermath of the September 11, 2011 terrorist mass murders in New York City. Falling Canons takes the main theme of Falling Man through a series of elegant and rigorous movements for solo piano, which Christopher O’Riley handles with sensitivity and just the right amount of virtuoso display — which is to say, not too much. Falling Trio uses the same principal theme for a one-movement work that, like Falling Canons, has seven parts — in this case, seven variations, all of them expertly developed and very well played by Trio21. As for String Quartet No. 5, “American,” it is a larger-scale work than either of the others, but resembles them in one key way: it too is based on a single theme, which Fuchs adapts, arranges, tosses about and develops in a series of clever and often elegant ways through four movements lasting nearly half an hour. The Delray String Quartet plays the work with verve and considerable sensitivity, and this CD as a whole shows why Fuchs’ music is some of the most popular worldwide among performers and audiences interested in modern American composers.

This is the sort of album that seems to well epitomize what a composer is about. And Fuchs’s music is singular enough that what is going on in his music stands out with a kind of hard-drawn clarity.

The Fifth String Quartet runs about a half hour, with one long movement centered around a theme that winds along at some length.… What does hit me is the quality of the contrapuntal and harmonic thematic development.… The Delray String Quartet sounds great in their performance of what is a very pleasing, moving piece.…

The "Falling Canons," in seven movements, works out some brilliant counterpoint for solo piano, based on a theme from "Falling Man." There is a set of intricate variations, canons, developed out of the chromatic falling theme motif. Christopher O'Riley shines in the solo role.…

"Falling Trio" works out an expanded color palette made available by using a piano trio (piano, violin, cello).… Cascading piano, complemented by long-lined, long-toned figures in the strings leave us grounded, feeling moved and, perhaps, rather transcendent. Trio21 are exemplary on this piece.…

When the music is finished and silence reigns (as much as there can be such a thing where I write) one is left with the feeling that a presence has gone, that as much as music can say what words cannot, that all has been said, that more would add nothing to what has been expressed.

Fuchs delivers an extremely powerful punch with these three works sequenced as they are on the CD. The triumvirate of sounds acts as a kind of monumental remembrance in musical terms. This is a high form of discourse indeed. Recommended!    — Grego Applegate Edwards

Kenneth Fuchs and I were classmates at Juilliard well over 30 years ago, and I am delighted to hear how he has blossomed imo one of our best Americanist romantics. I’m sure his teacher David Diamond would also be pleased. This splendid program contains four recent orchestral pieces, two with string soloists, and a short overture and should delight conservative listeners and all sympathetic to the style.

Atlantic Riband (2008) is an overture in two parts: an introduction that recurs as coda and two colorful contrasting sections. It was inspired by the transoceanic voyage of a ship containing immigrants to the United States. Dramatic and brilliantly orchestrated, it should put a charge into any program.

American Rhapsody (2008) is a very beautiful, even sublime single movement romance for violin and orchestra. Michael Ludwig plays it appropriately, though a little heavy on the vibrato for me. Nevertheless, it could easily become standard American repertoire for violinists (it complements Aaron Kernis’s also sublime Air.)

Also beautiful is Divinum Mysterium (2008), a single movement for viola and orchestra based on the Protestant hymn tune Of the Father’s Love Begotten, itself based on the 11th Century trope of the work’s title. Copland, Barber, and a little Vaughan Williams … can be heard in the background. Mr. Silverthorne plays it with care and rich tone, and should create many advocates for the piece.

The Concerto Grosso (2009), for string quartet and string orchestra, is built with material from his 1998 Fourth Quartet. In one lively 10-minute movement the work is fresh and engaging, lyrical, and hard to resist. I wish the piece were expanded into more movements to create a more substantial statement.

The program closes with Discover the Wild (2010), a cheery five-minute overture that would make a terrific opening to any program of American orchestral music.

This will be sure to please all who enjoy late century tonal music with a distinctly American accent. Everything is perfectly played by these British players. The music should certainly be played in this country as well.    — Allen Gimbel

Speaking of open-hearted music, I must bring to your attention the new Naxos CD of Kenneth Fuchs’s orchestral works (8.559723), brilliantly played by the London Symphony Orchestra, under American conductor JoAnn Falletta. Like Aaron Copland, Fuchs (b. 1956) has a way of capturing the stirrings of the human heart and the yearnings of the soul in highly spirited, soaring music.  His works carry within themselves an inimitably American sense of expectancy, of horizons glimpsed and striven for, and, finally, of boldly announced arrivals. He achieves all this within the conventional means of tonality. Orchestrally, he employs a sparkling kind of American Impressionism, though I heard a dash of Benjamin Britten’s Sea Interludes in Atlantic Riband.  American Rhapsody is, according to Fuchs, a Romance for violin and orchestra. It has a Samuel Barber-like melodic appeal and orchestral lushness to it. If I wanted an English reference point for its soaring solo violin line, I would choose Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending. Violinist Michael Ludwig plays with both elegance and exquisite feeling. So does violist Paul Silverthorne in the lovely Divinum Mysterium, a one movement concerto for viola and orchestra, inspired by a Protestant hymn tune. This is unfailingly appealing and immediately accessible music.    — Robert R. Reilly

Kenneth Fuchs … has gained attention on both sides of the Atlantic for broadly appealing compositions in a largely tonal idiom reminiscent in many gestures of the music of Aaron Copland. Two works here, Atlantic Riband and American Rhapsody, are patriotic crowd-pleasers in a long tradition; the former work alludes to the ocean liners that brought so many millions of immigrants to the U.S. Yet Fuchs combines these qualities with a variety of purely abstract procedures that keep you listening after the big tunes wear away. Perhaps the album’s most effective work, not even mentioned in the graphics, is the Concerto Grosso, a sort of Mahlerian take on the Baroque form, setting a string quartet against a string orchestra in a pleasing variety of textures amplified by luscious harmonies. Divinum Mysterium, a viola concerto, is not a vocal work but a development on a piece of plainchant…. The program ends with a vigorous overture, Discover the Wild. Conductor JoAnn Falletta, leading the London Symphony Orchestra, is an ideal ambassador for this kind of music, which anyone sitting at a free outdoor summer concert might enjoy, but which holds up to repeated hearings. Recommended, especially to symphonic programmers.      — James Manheim

Full harmony: Kenneth Fuchs writes tonal orchestral music of great imagination, says Anthony Burton
Kenneth Fuchs — born 1956, professor of composition at the University of Connecticut — writes in a mainstream tonal idiom. He’s a master of orchestral writing: resonantly built-up chords, scurrying string textures, lucid woodwind exchanges, telling interjections from brass and percussion. In this selection of works from the last five years, Atlantic Riband portrays the movement of a majestic transatlantic liner; American Rhapsody for violin and orchestra is wound round a quasi-improvisatory solo line; Divinum Mysterium for viola and orchestra resourcefully explores the possibilities of a hymn tune; the Concerto Grosso makes imaginative use of the combination of string quartet and string orchestra; and Discover the Wild is a short, breezy overture. On Naxos’s third Fuchs recording, everything gets five-star treatment: violinist Michael Ludwig and viola player Paul Silverthorne make the solo parts their own, and the LSO under JoAnn Falletta sounds brilliant in a spacious Abbey Road recording.
PERFORMANCE    RECORDING   — Anthony Burton

The Fifth String Quartet of American composer Kenneth Fuchs, which had its world premiere Sunday afternoon at the Colony Hotel in Delray Beach, is an effective piece of dramatic music first and foremost, with a big-boned grandeur that shares sonic space with an intense and hearfelt elegy.

Fuchs, a professor of composition at the University of Connecticut, grew up in Fort Lauderdale and wrote the work at the behest of the Delray String Quartet, which gave the premiere and will play it again Friday night and Sunday afternoon. The composer said in remarks to an appreciative house last Sunday that the quartet, subtitled American, is a reflection on his country in the post 9-11 era.

Formally, the quartet is laid out in four movements, the outer two essentially in A major and the middle two in the neighborhood of D minor, all with traditional attributes such as sonata-allegro form, a scherzo and a double fugue. Its language is tonal, occasionally minimalist, and highly accessible, with a blue-skies feeling to much of it that derives from Fuchs’ extensive use of counterpoint and individual lines.

All of the material in the quartet is derived from the opening theme, a long-breathed, slow, Coplandesque canon that starts with the first violin and continues down to the cello. It’s one of those themes that promises a lot, and its derivations later in the quartet were clear to discern, again because the solo-line texture Fuchs sets up at the beginning accustoms the ear to single them out….

The first movement sets a difficult challenge for the foursome, dominated as it is by a bustling variation of the theme that requires an athletic bow and precise intonation at a high rate of speed. The effect is one of great optimism and energy, and exciting to hear. Each member attacked the assignment with gusto, building up a big cathedral of sound before the music darkened and set the stage for the scherzo.

The second movement, an agitated Shostakovich-style march, turns into a movement of almost constant motion, with long passages of pizzicati and fast-stepping motifs played in unison by all four members. Early on, the viola plays a dark-hued melody derived from the theme over a nervous pizzicato in the cello that ends up extending for pages; violist Richard Fleischman and cellist Claudio Jaffé played this beautifully, giving it a strong sense of dark energy. This is a powerful, propulsive movement, and it got a fine performance from the quartet.

The third, marked Elegia, again hints at Shostakovich by starting (after a minor-key version of the opening) with a sad-carousel waltz theme in the second violin’s upper registers that gets taken up by the whole ensemble and ultimately turns into an aggressive, sardonic version of itself before what may be the elegy itself appears toward the end of the movement….

The finale returns to the open-prairie feeling of the first, with a fugue subject as close to a fiddle breakdown as it could get, and when all four instruments took their turn at it, the effect was joyful and confident .…

The Colony audience applauded the piece vociferously, and there is no doubt about its ability to engage listeners. Kenneth Fuchs has written a fine piece of music in this quartet, one that could conceivably fill the new-music inclinations of American string quartet concerts in an absorbing way.    — Greg Stepanich

The Ravel piece set up what was undoubtedly the main dish on Saturday’s menu, the world premiere of Kenneth Fuchs’ remarkable work “Falling Man.”

Composers nowadays often find themselves in a bit of a bind: on the one hand, they’re intrigued by the various musical possibilities in the ideas and techniques of the avant-garde composers of the 20th Century; on the other hand, many audience members find music using said ideas and techniques to be ugly and, what’s worse, boring. So composers have to satisfy both their own artistic ambition (after all, if they themselves don’t find their music interesting, why should they bother writing it?) and their audience (if audiences don’t want to hear it, who’s going to listen?).

With “Falling Man,” Fuchs hits both targets squarely. The 18-minute work for baritone and orchestra sets the prologue of Don DeLillo’s celebrated novel of the same name about the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, as adapted by the American poet J. D. McClatchy. Setting prose rather than poetry offers unique challenges, and Fuchs meets them by dividing the text into several smaller but thematically-related arias which are linked by orchestral interludes. The vocalist’s speech-like rhythms and 12-tone melody are expanded, colored, and sometimes interrupted by orchestral interjections of great beauty and power and no small difficulty.

The evening’s soloist, baritone James Maddalena, is among the world’s most prominent singers of contemporary opera, so it was little surprise that he was magnificent; his fine diction, paired with Twichell’s remarkable acoustics, ensured that every syllable of text projected throughout the auditorium. Under the sure hand of Ioannides the orchestra was just about as magnificent, handling a fiercely difficult score with aplomb throughout the ensemble.    — Christopher Vaneman

Next came a work that represented a risk, since the author, Kenneth Fuchs, is practically unknown in our country. The work by this composer, age 55, is “Canticle to the Sun,” for horn and orchestra. The soloist was the Polish musician Jacek Muzyk, who showed a great command of the instrument…. His interpretation was important to engaging the attention of the public toward this work, which is very characteristic of the composer’s sound. Fuchs’s music includes brilliant, colorful orchestrations that many compare with Aaron Copland, but the style and organization of the material recalls David Diamond. His thematic resources can seem somewhat thin in some passages, but there is no doubt that this work sustains the listener’s attention.    — Álvaro Gallegos M.

Stacy brought a masterful sense of control to the performance. He played as if it were an inspired improvisation, like a meditation in peaceful solitude. The ensemble was also of interest. There were many textures, like the opening sounds played by the section violins, in which overlaid bowings and fingered trills created rich and complicated colors. Alternating between lyrical and textural colors, this concerto moved in variations, closing with a fugato and a quodlibet which were forged from clever melodic transformations.    — Jeffrey Johnson

[T]his truly beautiful, oddly American work somehow taught us something new and important about our existence, as a violist played a 3-figure passage, leading to a chiming and sustained close, reminiscent of Samuel Barber and our other great composer of the American essence, Aaron Copland. The audience stood, with cries of "Bravo!" and the composer, called to the stage, embraced both the soloist and the conductor, who congratulated the orchestra and soloists.    — Linda Phillips

Fuchs, a Broward County native who studied at the University of Miami before moving on to Juilliard, was on hand to discuss his brief but engaging one-movement quartet, subtitled Bergonzi, in honor of the UM-based quartet for whom it was written. It’s a relatively light but tautly constructed piece built on a three-note rising motif first sounded by the viola. That trades off with a gentler three-note motif introduced by the cello, and the music soon expands into a busy, energetic sonic tableau, music that sounds very open and very American.

In the middle, the cello motif is transformed into a moody, expectant theme over a pizzicato version of the three-note opening material; in the last section, the feeling of purposeful energy resumes. It is a fine piece of music, and the Delray played it well….

Despite its speedy tempo and offbeat accents, this is essentially positive, forthright music … it was impressive that the Delray began its season with a piece of recent contemporary American music, which to my mind is the logical core repertory for this quartet.    — G. Stepanich

This concert featured the world première of Fuchs' viola concerto "Divinum Mysterium"…. And as an ending point for Fuchs' tenure as ASO composer-in-residence, it was entirely appropriate: well-crafted, imaginative, concise, and the farthest along work of his that Adrian audiences have heard.

… Meditative in spots, hauntingly beautiful in others, restlessly energetic in still others, the work builds over its 16-minute time frame to an atmospheric climax. As the work opens up and breathes at that point, the overall effect is one of journeying through a deeply spiritual experience into a place of joy and peace.

And Saturday's audience got to hear it performed by the musician for whom it was written: Paul Silverthorne, principal violist of the London Symphony Orchestra. Silverthorne's performance of the work, which he had a significant role in helping craft, was nothing short of spectacular. His musicianship is extraordinary and his interpretation of the viola's role in this concerto is quite remarkable.

… Here's hoping this isn't the last Adrian sees of Ken Fuchs and his music, because it's been quite a partnership.    — Arlene Bachanov

Kenneth Fuchs is currently enjoying a truly impressive amount of critical acclaim, certainly due in part to Canticle to the Sun (Concerto for French Horn and Orchestra), which was featured on the second recording of his music produced by the London Symphony Orchestra, released in January 2008, and reviewed in the October 2008 edition of The Horn Call.…

The concerto’s immense popularity with horn players also speaks volumes. Timothy Jones, for whom it was written, recorded it for the 2008 release in 2006. Rick Todd premièred it in 2008 in Hartford CT, and it has since been performed by David Wick in Norfolk VA, and Randy Gardner in Denver at the 40th International Horn Symposium.… The horn writing is elegant, lyrical, idiomatic, and already well-appreciated by listeners and performers alike.

Fire, Ice, and Summer Bronze, the two-movement, twelve-minute idyll for brass quintet is scored for C trumpets, horn, trombone, and bass trombone.… Although the range and tessitura demands are modest, the range of expression (which is greater than the label "idyll" might imply), the ensemble precision required for the rhythmic complexities, and the uniqueness of the expressionist yet tonal style within the brass quintet repertoire would make this work a great addition to a program of demanding brass chamber music.

Autumn Rhythm … is an elegant, lyrical exploration of the colors and textures inspired by the aesthetic of Abstract Expressionism that Fuchs describes as "states of feeling expressed through gesture." …    — Virginia Thompson, West Virginia University

Now, about "Atlantic Riband" itself. It's been very exciting over the last two seasons to have had the opportunity as an ASO concertgoer to hear the premières of several of Ken Fuchs' works. That sort of thing is a relatively rare privilege for any orchestra anywhere, and it happens in Adrian, and not just once.

And the work itself is quite remarkable. Intended by its composer to evoke the feelings of a transatlantic journey in the age of the great ocean liners — the title is taken from the Blue Riband, a long streamer that during that era was awarded to the ship that crossed the Atlantic the fastest — it certainly does all of that. It opens with a sense of anticipation and bustle as the journey begins, with perhaps even a bit of trepidation woven in at what lies ahead on the crossing and at the destination. Then it moves from there through a whole series of very complex textures, harmonics and rhythms to a triumphant conclusion.

It's a composition that's instantly both musically and emotionally appealing, to say nothing of being a real showpiece for both its composer and the orchestra that plays it. Fuchs’ work is a terrific addition to the modern classical music repertoire.    — Arlene Bachanov

The Fuchs work, which had its première Friday night, is a string quartet which the composer turned into a concerto grosso for this concert. Having first heard the string-quartet version and now the concerto grosso, I have to say I much prefer this new version. It preserves what makes the string quartet so interesting while adding heft and richness. At the same time, the parts of the quartet that I find somewhat musically harsh are softened by the additional instrumental forces.

The work, all of 10 minutes long but packing a lot of musical ideas into those 10 minutes, begins with a nervous energy and moves from there through passages that are first almost hypnotically mystical and then playful enough to have come off of Mozart’s pen if he were writing 21st-century American music (well, more likely, off of Mozart’s computer in that instance, but you get the point) before coming to a brisk conclusion.

It’s dramatic, very interesting, very smart music, and eminently listenable. And on Friday night, the ASO and the quartet that joined it for this concert, Quatuor Nouveau (violinists Judith Teasdle and Joe Deller, violist Jessica Zelinski and cellist Brandon Cota), absolutely gave it a terrific rendering …    — Arlene Bachanov

Sung also took center stage later in the program in a piece written by Fuchs especially for her to play at this concert, a work for violin and orchestra titled “American Rhapsody.” When I first heard this piece at a rehearsal this week, I very quickly became enamored of it, and that feeling was only solidified at the performance itself. This is just a lovely work — contemplative, rather melancholy in spots, and music that’s just really in the moment, so to speak; it evokes a picture of stillness and serenity, rather as though you were sitting on your porch in the morning with a cup of coffee, watching the sunrise. And it was very beautifully played by both Sung and the orchestra.

The other Ken Fuchs world-première piece on the program was “Discover the Wild,” an overture written by him for a PBS nature documentary that, due to funding difficulties, never got completed nor did the overture get recorded. Dodson used it, appropriately given its structure, as the concert’s opening work.

Whereas “American Rhapsody” is quietly meditative, “Discover the Wild” is all about action. A listener gets propelled across the wide-open spaces of the American West in a way reminiscent of Copland’s “Rodeo” or “Billy the Kid” or, okay, of the theme music for “The Magnificent Seven.” It’s eminently listenable music, and deserves, as “American Rhapsody” does but in a different way of course, to be part of any orchestra’s repertoire. It really would be right at home in a pops-concert setting.

The fact that the ASO was presenting a world-première work (well, two world-première works, of course) isn’t especially noteworthy. Nor was the fact that the composer himself was here to work with the orchestra and to be at the concert. What was unique about Sunday is that the concert marked the start of a multiple-work partnership between the ASO and Fuchs. That’s really a rare thing for any orchestra to undertake. And if the rest of the music the orchestra performs of his is as excellent as these first two pieces were, ASO audiences are in for quite a treat over the long term.   — Arlene Bachanov

Kenneth Fuchs writes colorful and attractive music that falls gratefully on the ear but has sufficient backbone and variety to reward repeated listening. United Artists is a zippy concert-opener full of orchestral brilliance and good tunes. Fuchs’ willingness, in common with many contemporary composers, to indulge a fondness for tuned percussion (bells, glockenspiel, etc.) gives the piece a certain Hollywood glitz, but that’s no crime in such extrovert music.

The centerpiece of this program consists of three chamber works, all subtitled “Idyll”, for brass quintet, woodwind quintet, and a mixed quintet of strings and winds. The latter work is surely the most interesting, perhaps because of its more varied timbral possibilities, but it almost goes without saying that anything called “Idyll”, from Siegfried’s onward, lasts about 20 percent longer than it needs to. Fuchs doesn’t quite avoid this trap, and I wouldn’t suggest playing all three of them back to back, but there’s no denying the music’s finely honed ensemble writing and abundance of quality ideas.

Saving the best for last, Canticle to the Sun is a horn concerto written for LSO principal Timothy Jones, who plays it extremely well. The piece is lovely — full of good tunes taking full advantage of the solo instrument’s lyrical and bravura possibilities — and scored with a fine sense of the horn’s ability to combine and interact with the various orchestral sections. JoAnn Falletta leads the LSO in performances that offer the right feeling of proprietary confidence, and all five pieces are very well recorded, resulting in a worthwhile disc, by a composer certainly worth watching (and hearing).   — Artistic quality 8 / Sound quality 9    — David Hurwitz

Successful follow up to Fuchs’s previous Grammy-nominated Naxos CD  Based on two Grammy nominations for the first disc of Fuchs’s music that Naxos produced in 2005 with the LSO and Falletta, the company has apparently decided to see if lighting will strike twice in the same place. Based on what I hear here, it may .... I have made no bones about my admiration for JoAnn Falletta, and the LSO is playing like the best orchestra in the world these days, so any disc will stand a chance of success with these two ingredients. Add to the mix the amazing first chair hornist of the LSO and a concerto that serves him well, based on the poem by Francis of Assisi (“All creatures of our God and King”, etc.), and you have a winning combination. This work is startling in its technical proficiencies, based on a four-note motif that is battered and transfigured endlessly (and deliciously, and even hints of Britten in places, particularly in the scoring), and has a flowing, graceful feel to the phrasing. This is an important work, and horn players especially can be glad.

Quiet in the Land is scored for flute, English horn, clarinet, viola, and cello, and is a delightful meditation on the expanses of the Midwestern United States. Fuchs indicates it was written during the time of Gulf War II, and as such provides a needed and responsible respite from hyperbole while reflecting on the true spirit of this land. Fire, Ice, and Summer Bronze seems to me the weakest work here, though by no means negligible. It is the third work of the composer inspired by the abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler, and perhaps that is the problem; the music is seems disjointed without any sort of tangible connectedness. Nicely scored, but ultimately falling just short of the meaningfulness present in these other pieces.

Autumn Rhythm is for woodwind quintet, and successfully captures the spirit of the painting of the same name, by American iconoclast Jackson Pollack, whose fantastically beautiful “drip” paintings are among the collective genius of American art. This work is brilliantly scored for the perfect ensemble, as it seems like only winds could successfully provide both the lyrical and the spiky moments so needed for such a portrayal as this. United Artists is a work for orchestra inspired by the first recording sessions that Fuchs had with the LSO — it is an effective opener to this disc, broad spaced and nicely fanfare-ish in nature.

The sound is first class here, and Naxos has done a fine service by presenting more of Fuchs’s muse to the public. A definite winner all around!    — Steven Ritter

Tonality redefined  Kenneth Fuchs studied with, among others, Babbitt, Diamond, and Persichetti. In sound, the bustling Persichetti exercises the dominating influence, but Babbitt probably wields more in Fuchs’s habits of construction.

Most immediately, the sound of Fuchs’s music grabs your attention in ways similar to Copland’s. Bright, lean sonorities — high strings, widely-spaced chords, big-shoulder brass, and so on — prevail. Yet, also like Copland, Fuchs has more to offer than orchestration — namely, real matter and argument.

Fuchs builds almost all the scores here out of limited sets of intervals or even specific pitches: interval-rows and pitch-rows, if you will. It’s all tonal, even mainly diatonic, although not really minimalist, if you care. However, the means allow Fuchs to take an individual approach to tonality. Key-change means less than rhythmic and textural change. The piece takes shape as we hear the basic building blocks — like individual tiles in a mosaic — slipping into place. The danger that Fuchs sometimes courts is that he concentrates on the “puzzle” aspects of a piece instead of its rhetorical flow. At least, that’s what I felt with woodwind quintet, Autumn Rhythm, inspired by the Jackson Pollack painting. Incidentally, a noticeable part of Fuchs’s music takes its inspiration from post-World War II painting. The work is built on minor second, minor third, perfect fifth, minor seventh, and their inversions — major seventh, major sixth, and so on. As one listens, one notices which intervals he’s fooling with, but I didn’t, at least, go anywhere. The music neither transformed nor transported me. It was a lot of content and little meaning.

Nevertheless, everything else on the program I liked very much. United Artists, a curtain-raiser tribute to the London Symphony Orchestra, makes a joyful noise, combining the enthusiasm of the outdoors-y Copland with the propulsion of John Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine.

Quiet in the Land, a mixed quintet, works the Copland American Pastoral vein and evokes open skies. Fuchs wrote it in Oklahoma, amid the plains. He has also stated that since he began it when the Iraq war broke out, how much quiet there really was in the U.S. and whether any of the disturbance made it into the work. I couldn’t hear any, although I will say that the piece gives you the feeling of the big sky without wallowing in sentimentality.

Fuchs based his brass quintet — Fire, Ice, and Summer Bronze — on two paintings by Helen Frankenthaler. Pieces for brass quintet usually fall into two categories: flashy, extrovert glory or introverted meditation, but Fuchs manages to have it both ways. Half of the first movement, “Fire and Ice,” (based on the pitch row D# E G C B D) bursts with fanfare-like phrases, while the latter half (with the brass muted) is subdued. The second movement, “Summer Bronze” (pitch row: E G C B A F), gives the French horn a long cantabile line against an Impressionistic shimmer of brass — the satisfying torpor of a summer day. One can also consider the quintet a mini-concerto for French horn, since that instrument takes the lead at almost every opportunity and plays against the mass of its brothers.

On the other hand, Canticle to the Sun is a full-blown horn concerto, written especially for the LSO’s principal hornist, Timothy Jones. Perhaps as a salute to Jones’s national origins, Fuchs takes the hymn “All creatures of our God and King” (tune: Lasst uns erfreuen), a paraphrase of St. Francis and harmonized by Vaughan Williams for the groundbreaking English Hymnal in 1906, and essentially plays with it. Fuchs calls it “fantasy variations,” as opposed to a formal variation set, because little marks individual variations. But don’t expect another Vaughan Williams Tallis-like treatment. Instead, Fuchs slices and dices the tune down to characteristic intervals (we should be used to this from him by now) and combines and recombines. You hardly ever, if at all, hear the melody entire. Nevertheless, this is a gorgeous work, especially its ecstatic opening and conclusion. Parts of the tune peek through the orchestral glitter and shimmer, like stars through the Aurora Borealis.

Falletta and the LSO do a very fine job indeed. The composer should be thrilled. I hesitate to call the LSO the best orchestra in London only because there are so many others that compete at its level. Jones is a wonderfully lyric player, with an intense singing line. At least, that’s mainly what Fuchs seemed to respond to in his playing. A winner in Naxos’s “American Classics” series.    — Steve Schwartz

American composer, conductor, and music administrator Kenneth Fuchs (b. 1956) earned his degrees from the University of Miami and Juilliard and holds claim to an impressive ballot of teachers — Milton Babbitt, David Diamond, Vincent Persichetti, and David Del Tredici, among others. Currently, Fuchs serves as professor of composition at the University of Connecticut. His work list is quite extensive, embracing a wide range of musical styles in both instrumental and vocal forms.

The current disc continues a theme of interest to Fuchs and Falletta they have both visited together before; and that is musical imagery called forth by specific works in the graphic arts. A previous Naxos release, reviewed in 29:3, contained Fuchs’s Out of the Dark for French horn and orchestra, a sort of Pictures at an Exhibition in proto-concerto form inspired by three canvases from the hand of abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler, who here makes a slightly more subdued and gentler appearance in Fire, Ice, and Summer Bronze. The “Ice” section of the piece, with all five brass instruments muted, creates an unusual sound that I find not cold, bright, and refractive of light like a diamond — an image I sometimes associate with Sibelius — but nocturnal and secretive. As always, Fuchs relies upon modern, somewhat eclectic styles and techniques to achieve results that fall upon the ears without protest.

United Artists was written in 2006 as a tribute to the London Symphony Orchestra. It’s a busy and sometimes brassy fanfare type piece that highlights the various sections of the orchestra in a way that reminded me of Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, albeit in American jeans and T-shirt rather than a penguin suit. I should think it would make an effective overture to a pops concert or curtain raiser for theater event.

Quiet in the Land is, according to Fuchs, “a sonic ode to the expansive landscapes and immense arching sky of the great Midwestern Plains.” Hmm, where have we heard this sort of thing before? Copland? William Schuman? Again, Fuchs writes music that is not exactly unoriginal but that is clearly suggestive and derivative of classic Americana models. The piece lives up to its title, with beautifully scored parts for the mixed wind quintet ensemble.…

In New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, there hangs an enormous creation, 8.75 feet high by 17.25 feet wide, titled Autumn Rhythm, by Jackson Pollock.… Fortunately, Fuchs has not followed Pollock’s example by dripping ink on a piece of manuscript paper. His piece of the same title is a 13-minute tone poem of sorts that comes across, even if it wasn’t intended to, as a tongue-in-cheek, good-natured, funning poke at Pollock’s pretentious posturing. Fuchs’s quirky, sputtering rhythms and sudden odd juxtapositions of instruments called to mind Gunther Schuller’s “The Twittering Machine” from his Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee, a delightful work, by the way, that could do with a new recording.

Finally, we come to Fuchs’s concerto for French horn and orchestra. The work takes its title, Canticle to the Sun, from a hymn text originally composed by St. Francis of Assisi, circa 1225. Fuchs bases the concerto on a setting of the text to a tune found in the Geistliche Kirchengesang, dated 1623. In 1906, Vaughan Williams harmonized the tune.… There’s a lot of Americana at its core, which is not to denigrate it in any way. It’s a masterfully crafted work, with a horn part that any horn player would relish. Timothy Jones does himself and Fuchs proud. Nor should JoAnn Falletta’s contribution to this enterprise be overlooked. As usual, she proves an adept leader who happens to be especially sympathetic to 20th-century American music.

…

Naxos’s sound, as expected, is excellent. Recommended to the receptive.    — Jerry Dubins

Kenneth Fuchs studied at Juilliard with Diamond and Persichetti, absorbing that 40’s and 50’s Amercanist spirit still in the halls back then. The music here is soundly tonal, resolutely conservative, and devoid of abrasion. Half of the pieces are for orchestra; the other half is chamber music.

United Artists (2006) is a joyous, highly cinematic opener for orchestra. Mr. Fuchs is a fine orchestrator, and the LSO responds enthusiastically. The three “idylls” for chamber quintets are beautifully played by LSO members. Quiet in the Land (2003) is a peaceful bit of Americana for mixed quintet of winds and strings.

The next two of these pieces were inspired by visual art. Fire, Ice, and Summer Bronze (1986) is a two-movement essay for brass quintet on works of Helen Frankenthaler (it is her sunny silkscreen that graces the jewel box). The two movement’s characters are fanfare-like and pensive. The second of these works, Autumn Rhythm (2006) for woodwind quintet, takes its title from the painting by Jackson Pollock. In three casually structured, improvisatory sections, the piece retains the composer’s Amercanist language while simulating Pollock’s drips and random motion. Like all of these pieces, the emphasis is on optimistic lyricism, not at all of our time (or Pollock’s, for that matter). All of these pieces should take their place in the university chamber music repertoire, sure to be enjoyed by players and audiences alike, especially if played as well as they are here.

The best is saved for last with Canticle to the Sun (2005), a vivacious horn concerto written for LSO principal Timothy Jones. The 20-minute, single-movement piece is based on a hymn tune from the Geistliche Kirchengesang, set in 1906 by Vaughan Williams but mostly sung today in William Draper’s 1925 version (“All Creatures of Our God and King”). The concerto is thoroughly cheerful, warm, and delighted with life — an unusual description for most music and art today. Soloist Jones is a formidable virtuoso and puts forth the work with stunning assurance. The orchestral works in particular are good reasons to pick up this disc. Notes by the composer.    — Allen Gimbel

Naxos’s second disc of music by Kenneth Fuchs was recorded, like the first, by the London Symphony Orchestra and JoAnn Falletta. The full orchestra plays United Artists, written in tribute to its own virtuosity, and provides a glittering backdrop to its principal horn Timothy Jones in Canticle to the Sun, a fantasia on a hymn tune; different quintets of LSO players play three chamber works, Autumn Rhythm, Quiet in the Land, and Fire, Ice, and Summer Bronze, all subtitled “idyll.” Everything’s very affirmative and major-key, and markedly lacking in tension ().    — Anthony Burton

Another composer with whom I have been in touch is Kenneth Fuchs. It began with a Crisis review of his first Naxos CD, featuring his exhilarating An American Place (for Orchestra), brilliantly written to express the “brash optimism of the American spirit.” Fuchs contacted me to suggest that I listen to his string quartets on an Albany Records CD. I found them to be among the finest American quartets I have heard.

Like Gerber, Fuchs is an exemplar of the recovery of American music.…

A new Naxos CD … provides an expanding picture of Fuchs’s talents. The CD begins with United Artists, a scintillating tribute to the London Symphony Orchestra, which Fuchs came to admire during its recording of his first Naxos CD. United Artists is a five-minute fanfare that has something of the vivacious spirit of Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to Candide or of one of Malcolm Arnold’s spirited confections. This is an excellent public celebration that lets the orchestra strut its stuff.

Quiet in the Land is as interior a piece as United Artists is an exterior one in spirit. This mixed quintet for strings and winds moves into Samuel Barber/Aaron Copland territory with its mellifluous melody and gentle, rippling beauty. Fuchs calls it “a sonic ode to the expansive landscapes and immense arching sky of the great Midwestern Plains.” As a Midwesterner, I can attest that this scenery evokes a deep sense of yearning and expectation. Fuchs captures these feelings with real poignancy. This twelve-minute piece is a reflective gem.

What continually impresses is the level of refinement in the writing. This man does not have to shout to make himself heard. As I have noticed in his work before, there is a sense of ease in his music. By this I do not mean easiness, but a calm confidence in what he is doing and in the quality of his material. Like Gerber, he is endowed with a major melodic gift. Additionally, he is not afraid to take the time to let things develop with a sense of natural growth. In Autumn Rhythm, he captures some of the insouciant breeziness that only a master like Malcolm Arnold could achieve in his wind writing. This is another exquisite gem.

The longest and last composition on the CD is Canticle to the Sun, a concerto for French horn and orchestra (2005). This work catches the kind of Celtic magic and orchestral glitter that I used to hear in the work of the late Welsh composer William Mathias. Fuchs makes a gloriously long-lined melody for the French horn out of the hymn tune to “All Creatures of our God and King.” This outwardly celebratory, declamatory work is infused with inner joy and spirit. Listen to it, or to any of these works, and you will know what Fuchs means when he says, “I make no apologies for writing from the heart.” No apologies needed; this is the vindication.    — Robert R. Reilly

This setting of Richard Wilbur’s poem is filled with harmonic color and compositional ingenuity. It is a beautiful model of modern choral music that works to convey a meaningful text using shifting harmonies, colorful dissonance, and dynamic contrast.…

Fuchs has provided us with a challenging work that thrives on the interplay of voices and the traditional techniques of canon and word painting. This unaccompanied work is framed with sections that layer the voices in rich harmony. A significant portion of the text is set using canonic techniques that provide a sense of motion and convey textual meaning. Text painting is clearly articulated through a fascinating ostinato in the men’s voices using the word “water” in mm. 65–82.

This work would be appropriate for advanced choirs with meter changes and the juxtaposition of duple and triple rhythms posing a challenge. It has great educational value because of Fuchs’s varied compositional techniques and the text is very meaningful as it ends with the phrase: “We are immigrants still, who travel in time, Bound where the thought of America beckons; But we hold our course, and the wind is with us.”    — William R. Green, Cleveland, Tennessee

An American’s salute to the LSO who again impress in his engaging music   Fuchs was so stunned by the legendary expertise of the LSO in playing at sight for a recording that he wrote United Artists as a short tribute. It opens this second Naxos CD; a series of chamber works follows, and the disc closes with Canticle to the Sun, a horn concerto in which the British connection continues with the soloist Timothy Jones from the LSO.

United Artists is a kind of fanfare to the orchestra, who obviously enjoyed it — the idiom stems from Copland and early Carter. Quiet in the Land for mixed string and wind quintet is contemplative in mood, generally music of low density suitable for illustration. This aspect comes to the fore in Autumn Rhythm, inspired by the paintings of Jackson Pollock; it would make an apt soundtrack for a series of his pictures.

Canticle to the Sun is based on the familiar hymn-tune “All Creatures of our God and King.” This is an imaginative idea where the soloist emerges from a tinkling backdrop and retains clear contact with the melody throughout, although it is never stated in full. The concerto adds up to a pastoral idyll with occasional spots for the timpani and lyrical cadenzas — all neatly played.    — Peter Dickinson

There’s a trend among today’s American composers to write music that is modern-sounding but easy on the ear. Perhaps Hollywood has something to do with it, or simply that Americans are maybe a bit more conservative in their outlook. Kenneth Fuchs’s music — he is in his early 50s — has that inoffensive trait. From sounds that have their roots in the expansive soundscapes of Copland and his mildly angular lyricism, Fuchs constructs delicately effusive scores, several of which, for varying ensembles, appear in this attractive survey of his music. It’s part of Naxos’s illuminating American Classics series, and features all and parts of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) under the direction of JoAnn Falletta. The full ensemble opens the disc with one of the composer’s most recent orchestral works — United Artists — and ends it with a horn concerto, Canticle to the Sun, specifically written for the LSO’s Timothy Jones and based on the traditional hymn tune to “All Creatures of Our God and King.” Both underline the darting filmic qualities of Fuchs’s style, a restless energy that combines virtuosity and clarity of texture with softness of touch. In many ways, though, the most interesting sounds appear in the reflective Quiet in the Land, Autumn Rhythm and Fire, Ice and Summer Bronze, all written for smaller chamber ensembles, which glow with inner warmth. An attractive disc from a very listenable composer.

Bargain of the Month   Kenneth Fuchs is fortunate indeed to have not one but two discs of his music recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra. The first, in 2003, was nominated for two Grammys in 2005 and the second, recorded in 2006, should do well too, such is the quality of both the music and music-making. Holding it all together in the orchestral pieces and the mixed quintet is conductor JoAnn Falletta, who made such a strong impression in her recent disc of Respighi (review).

United Artists, the first item on the disc, was written specifically for the LSO as a gesture of thanks for their earlier recording of Fuchs’s works (Naxos 8.559224). At its core is a four-note motif, presented first in the Coplandesque opening fanfare. But this isn’t derivative music; indeed, the composer’s distinctive “voice” is evident from the outset, and his flair for orchestral colours and sheer lyricism shine through in this atmospheric opener.

Quiet in the Land is another of those vast musical landscapes that might provoke comparisons with Copland, yet Fuchs’s evocation of the Midwestern Plains just as the Iraq war was beginning is rather more complex and ambiguous in its sentiments. As the composer writes in the liner notes, “I wondered how quiet the spirit of our land might be”.

Even without this programme the opening bars hint at harmony, subtly undermined by vague discord — just listen to that quiet, agitated figure that begins at 1:30, beneath the more lyrical and expansive melody above. It is such lucid, “hear-through” writing, yet it’s full of warmth. The members of the LSO manage to bring out both these aspects of the score, blending precision with feeling. And what a haunting close, too.

The recording venue — St Luke’s in London’s Old Street — is very well captured by the engineers, with no hint of brittleness or edge. The musicians seem ideally placed, too, which is particularly welcome in Fire, Ice, and Summer Bronze for brass quintet. Subtitled an “Idyll … after two works on paper by Helen Frankenthaler” the first movement yokes together two eternal opposites — fire (the restless first section) and ice (the more muted second section).

There seems to be an underlying creative tension in some of these pieces, perhaps an attempt to reconcile musical and emotional extremes. For instance, in Summer Bronze the music is strangely mercurial — now lyrical, now dissonant, now both. But it’s that other dichotomy, between outward virtuosity and inner feeling, that these seasoned players — always secure, always poised — convey so well.

Based on a painting by Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm does contain some jazzy snippets, but the emphasis seems to be on sonorities, with long, lyrical melodic lines and, at times, a quirky bass. It is a strangely “in-between” piece; to use the autumn analogy, summer is not quite done, yet winter is on its way. In his notes Fuchs describes how the two states are drawn together and, indeed, how one becomes the other: “An unusual aspect of this composition is that in its final section the flute, oboe, and clarinet metamorphose into their lower — perhaps autumnal — counterparts, the alto flute, English horn, and bass clarinet.” It’s a remarkable sleight of hand, deftly constructed and seamlessly executed.

Canticle of the Sun — a hymn tune based on 13th-century texts by St Francis of Assisi — is built on a four-note motif. Written for the LSO’s principal horn player, Timothy Jones, this 20-minute gem has a radiant, all-embracing optimism that is just irresistible. Indeed, it is not unlike a stained glass window, all those fragments of high colour glowing in the light behind. But at the centre of it all is Jones’s supple and passionate playing, surely as seductive a performance of this piece as we are ever likely to hear.

As with Respighi’s Church Windows, Falletta displays a sense of line and phrase that is most welcome in this music. And while I’ve grumbled about the sound on some Naxos releases I’m prepared to eat humble pie on this one. The engineers have done an exceptional job capturing the sound of the LSO at St Luke’s; what a pleasant change from the dry-as-dust Barbican.

Early days, I know, but this could be one of my discs of 2008.   — Dan Morgan

If every piece of architecture had its own inherent sound, Mission San Juan Bautista would be heard for miles. The wood-and-plaster, primitively painted structure has a resounding acoustic like none other I’ve experienced.… Kenneth Fuchs’s United Artists (2006) was a perfect fit for the church. It was a tribute to the musicians of the London Symphony, and the short work’s dramatic, resounding chords and gloriously ringing orchestral flourishes constitute a modern fanfare of sorts. The composer’s beaming face at the work’s conclusion matched the bright, upbeat heralds of this euphonic crowd-pleaser that was given the royal treatment by the orchestra.    — Jason Victor Serinus

Sunday’s concert at the Mission opened with the world première of Kenneth Fuchs’s energetic “United Artists.” Bright and upbeat, its music filled the Mission with bracing fanfares and thunderous timpani cascades. A lyrically sweeping melody line spotlighting various orchestra sections and soloists intertwined with itself between joyous bold statements.    — Phyllis Rosenblum

East Coast composer Kenneth Fuchs … contributed a concert overture, “United Artists,” a lively and exuberant exercise that dances along at high speed with numerous “echoes” of a four-note theme.    — Paul Hertelendy

I only just caught up with a stunningly good Albany Records CD of String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, and 4 (TROY 480) by Kenneth Fuchs, released in 2001. I wrote an enthusiastic review of Fuchs’s ebullient orchestral work, An American Place, for Naxos recently; as a result, he contacted me and suggested I listen to his chamber music. I am glad that he did; these are among the best pieces of American chamber music I have encountered. Fuchs writes with a Janáček-like wildness, employs at times a piercing intimacy of a highly lyrical nature, and has a haunting Bernard Hermann-like quality to some of his themes and mysterious ostinatos. It is hard to imagine a better or more gripping performance than this one by the American String Quartet.    — Robert R. Reilly

I will close with something on the more exuberant side: Kenneth Fuchs’s An American Place (for Orchestra), written to express the “brash optimism of the American spirit.” This it does in a very appealing — in fact, exhilarating — musical outburst, which Fuchs builds to on John Adams-like chugging ostinatos and beautiful, soaring melodies. Fuchs is obviously trying to write in a popular style, and he succeeds without being cloying. Also on this Naxos release (8.559224) is Fuchs’s Eventide, a concerto for English horn, harp, percussion, and string orchestra. It is another immediately appealing work: enchanting, exquisitely fine, and gorgeously melodic. In Out of the Dark, Fuchs shows that he can write dissonant, thorny music to reflect upon Helen Frankenthaler’s paintings. However, by the third movement, Summer Banner, he returns to his gracious, mellifluous style. This is all beautifully played by the London Symphony Orchestra, under JoAnn Falletta.    — Robert R. Reilly

After hearing his highly accomplished and attractive music on this disc, you may find yourself wondering where Kenneth Fuchs has been hiding himself. The answer: Oklahoma, where the Juilliard-educated composer completed a lengthy term as director of the University’s School of Music in 2005. The Great Plains seem to have been a fine muse, judging from recent works like An American Place and Eventide. The former reveals a style that owes a great deal — though by no means everything — to minimalism; the gently chugging rhythm of the opening, and the melodies that gradually evolve out of it, will remind most listeners of John Adams, but after this initial impetus the music travels through a wide expressive and coloristic range. More uniform in mood, but also the most winning composition on the program, is Eventide, a gorgeously lyrical concerto for English horn. Written for the New York Philharmonic’s English horn player Thomas Stacy, who performs it here as well, Eventide unfolds slowly in dreamlike fashion, its melodies alluding to spirituals like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” with the solo instrument basking in its characteristically mournful yet comforting tone. With the chamber orchestra suite Out of the Dark (1984), inspired by abstract paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, we get to sample an earlier phase of Fuchs’ career. Slightly harsher and more angular, it also includes some of the most expressive music on the disc, with especially potent solo writing for the French horn. JoAnn Falletta conducted its première in 1985, and she leads the London Symphony through brilliant performances of all three works on this disc. Much credit is due to Naxos’ American Classics series, which has become one of the main venues to allow living composers like Kenneth Fuchs a much-deserved hearing.    — Scott Paulin

… Part tone-poem, part rhapsody, part concerto for orchestra, [An American Place] is nearly 19 minutes of a rich and vibrant tapestry of ever-changing moods and colors, a brilliant tour-de-force of evocative melody and masterful orchestration.

Beautiful as An American Place may be, the real gem on this program, at least for me, is Eventide, nominally a concerto for English horn and orchestra. To be sure, not every one of its 21 minutes had me enthralled — I particularly did not care for the passage beginning at 9:17, and again at 12:30 that, through some combination of over-blowing or simultaneous humming and blowing, makes the English horn sound like a kazoo. But the moment is short-lived, and the music returns to its opening mood of a lonely pastoral dreamscape, animated by a more agitated, contrapuntally developed mid-section, before returning to its earlier quietude. Thomas Stacy, who currently occupies the solo English horn chair at the New York Philharmonic, plays with remarkable control and beauty of tone.

Pursuing a theme she began with her “Pictures at a Gallery” CD (reviewed in 27:4) — works inspired by paintings — JoAnn Falletta concludes the present program with Fuchs’s Out of the Dark, a three-movement suite for chamber orchestra that draws its inspiration from three large canvases by Helen Frankenthaler — Heart of November, Out of the Dark, and Summer Banner, which are also the titles of the movements. Frankenthaler is generally classified as an abstract expressionist, and so it seems only fitting that Fuchs’s musical rendering should turn towards 12-tone and serial techniques. At the outset, at least, the music is a bit more austere and perhaps not as immediately palatable as are the other two works on the CD. But in the end, Fuchs returns to a warmer clime, concluding on a note of peaceful repose. The work features an important solo role for French horn, which is admirably played here by the first chair hornist of the LSO, Timothy Jones.

A superb introduction then to yet another voice to be heard in Naxos’s “American Classics” series. Recommended.    — Jerry Dubins

Kenneth Fuchs’ An American Place is a bright, big-hearted, neo-romantic work in the style of John Adams’ Harmonielehre. Adams’ finale is an unmistakable influence as both works open with motor rhythms chugging along in the strings while woodwinds and high percussion chirp and tingle above as the music builds to a spirit-lifting sunrise. Fuchs pretty much goes his own way from there as the piece travels through a series of engaging episodes — some featuring wonderful brass writing — and closes in a similar atmosphere to its opening. Eventide is a concerto for English horn, harp, percussion, and strings inspired by Negro spirituals such as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Mary Had a Baby,” though Fuchs does not quote them directly, at least not in a manner that’s easily recognizable. The work is reminiscent of the pastoral mood-music of Vaughan Williams, though the English horn writing occasionally brings to mind jazz saxophonist Kenny G — a tribute perhaps to the free spirited, highly virtuosic playing of soloist Thomas Stacy.

The pleasantries end with Out of the Dark, which is a set of three pieces based on works by expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler. “Heart of November” begins in thorny string paroxysms, while “Out of the Dark” moves somewhat away from the gnarly harmonies of the previous piece. “Summer Banner” gradually reintroduces consonance, and the work ends in a blissful, subdued atmosphere (with fine solo work by hornist Timothy Jones). JoAnn Falletta leads first-rate performances with the London Symphony Orchestra, captured in excellent sound — another fine addition to Naxos’ American Classics series.   — Artistic quality 9 / Sound quality 10    — Victor Carr Jr.

Kenneth Fuchs intended his 2002 orchestral score An American Place to reflect “the palette of musical sounds that have developed in the United States during the last hundred years.” Juddering minimalist rhythms at the outset, an open-prairie Copland soundscape, and the argumentative stringency of a Schuman or Harris can all be discerned in the composition, but it is no mere cut-and-paste assemblage. Its 19 minutes are cogently argued, tuneful, and bear a strong individual imprint. More pastoral, more alluringly sensuous in its gestures is Eventide, a concerto for English horn, creamily played here by New York Philharmonic principal Thomas Stacy. Out of the Dark, a chamber piece, draws on a more self-consciously modernistic idiom, but has the same fluidity of communication. An interesting account of how this CD came to be recorded is at www.kennethfuchs.com/lso.htm — it is worth reading. The LSO does a splendid job of basically sight-reading this unfamiliar music.    — Terry Blain

Kenneth Fuchs lists as his teachers Babbitt, Diamond and Persichetti. His An American Place, according to the composer, is “intended to suggest the rich body of music created by the American symphonists who have come before me and from whom I continue to take inspiration.” JoAnn Falletta, the conductor of this disc, directed the world première of this piece with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra in 2005. The latter section (“Finale scherzando”) suggests the “brash optimism of the American spirit.”

The work emerges from a slow, rumbly opening. Don’t they all?, says the cynic in me, but what emerges thereafter is evidence of a fertile aural imagination. Fuchs’ voice is confident, often glittering with some nods towards the minimalists. He explores darker regions later in the piece. There is the impression of Fuchs setting out his orchestral palette.

Eventide, a concerto for English horn (or cor anglais to use the European term), is more interesting, despite the razzle-dazzle of An American Place. It is stunningly played by Thomas Stacy (cor anglais to the NYPO), whose smooth, round tone is perfect for this crepuscular exercise. Stacy is astonishingly accurate in the faster passages but it is in the more evocative sections that he excels. Intrinsically American in sound-world, this is an interesting piece that is, in the final analysis, a touch long. Worth hearing for Stacy’s multiphonics, though. He manages to persuade us that this is no mere trick but a real expressive device in its own right — more often than not they just sound embarrassing!

Out of the Dark is subtitled, “Suite for Chamber Orchestra After Three Paintings by Helen Frankenthaler.” It is one of these paintings that adorns the cover of the disc (“Summer Banner” of 1968). The third movement takes this as its starting point; the other two are based on “Heart of November” and “Out of the Dark.” Frankenthaler’s abstract expressionism implies to Fuchs a progression from tension to resolution, a concept he has transferred to his music — not uniquely, it has to be said.

The first movement, “Heart of November” has a Bartókian slant. Superbly played all round, special mention should go to the soloist Timothy Jones, the LSO’s principal horn player, who gives the long, evocative melodies with real affection. The frozen, fragmentary “Out of the Dark” is the most impressive movement sonically, and the piece then moves straight into the final “Summer Banner,” where Jones’ horn playing reaches a climax of improbable smoothness — what slurs! The movement itself is evocative of large, open spaces.

Well worth investigating. Fuchs is a composer who is new to me, and it has been interesting to spend 55 minutes 16 seconds in his presence.    — Colin Clarke

With this edition in its ever-expanding and consistently intriguing American Classics series, Naxos introduces the music of contemporary composer, Kenneth Fuchs. There are three works that span his creative life from the mid-1980s to the present day.

Fuchs is of the generation of composers that grew up under the tutelage of the American neo-romantics (Fuchs’ teachers included David Diamond) caught between the pull of the atonal avant-garde and the fascination of minimalism. Fuchs’ idiom is strongly influenced by the latter, and he brings to it an ear for orchestral colour and the nuances of the American sounds that permeate the works of Copland, among others.

On An American Place:

The first work on the disc is the most interesting. An American Place is a tone poem for large orchestra. It is as colourful as it is quintessentially American — in a soft-edged, optimistic, mid-Western kind of way.… The influence of Fuchs’ fellow American composers is certainly strong, with hints of Adams, Copland, Sondheim and Diamond, among others, surfacing in the score. There are also more international influences at play. There is for example a reference to Bartók in the clarinet runs from Bluebeard’s “lake of tears” at around 11:08, which Fuchs contrasts wonderfully with bluesy brass. To my ears at least, there’s also a nod towards the sound-world of Walton from 12:48. However, while referential, the music never strays into pastiche. Fuchs’ use of contrasting rhythmic motifs in the strings and tuned percussion and his characterful writing for woodwinds and brass are quite individual. The orchestral playing is exemplary and the conducting sympathetic and true.

On Eventide:

A concerto for cor anglais in one movement, it seems to fall into three sections. There is a pastoral opening that conjures an atmosphere not too distant from that of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. This is followed by an eerie second section from about 6:58, with gentle dissonances in the strings and over-blowing of the cor anglais darkening the mood. Then a cadenza at 11:43 leads into a rhythmically driven finale which fades, after recalling the two previous sections, into resignation.… Thomas Stacy, the work’s dedicatee, plays with subtlety and feeling.…

On Out of the Dark:

The final work is a suite of three movements, each inspired by a different painting by the abstract expressionist artist Helen Frankenthaler (the picture that inspired the final movement appears on the CD cover). The piece seems to represent something of Fuchs’ own musical journey, beginning in a warm but atonal soundscape and moving “out of the dark” into a warmer, more tonal idiom in the third movement. This features some lovely writing for horn, rendered well by Timothy Jones.

Falletta has known and worked with Fuchs since their days at the Juilliard School in the mid-1980s, and her understanding of his music shows in her rhythmically aware and assured conducting. The London Symphony Orchestra is right with her in every bar, and the acoustic of St Luke’s adds a generous warmth to the recording.…

Not yet 50, American composer Kenneth Fuchs has a large body of works behind him in a variety of styles. But as An American Place makes clear, he has a distinctly native voice; it’s populated with overarching melodic phrases and has an incessant rhythmic drive.

An American Place is like the sophisticated soundtrack to a road movie. The composer himself is fascinated by the confluence of music and visual art — indeed, Out of the Dark is based on abstract canvases by New York artist Helen Frankenthaler.

Fuchs has an uncanny knack for conjuring up a dream-like sense of place. Both An American Place and Out of the Dark are wonderfully evocative. Their largely diatonic, post-romantic language may not be to all tastes but there’s no denying the mastery with which Fuchs handles his resources.

The cinematic feel of the music is second nature to an orchestra that has recorded more major film scores than almost any other. Fuchs is also well served by JoAnn Falletta, who understands his idiom and directs with energy and intensity.

It’s in the chamber-scale Eventide, a fantasia-concerto for cor anglais, that Fuchs is at his most original. Even here, though, there’s an evident nod to some famous antecedents — not least Dvořák’s use of the cor anglais in the New World symphony.

As an introduction to a prolific American composer, this CD is as good value and well-played a starting point as any.

There’s much to be said for ambition. Forty-nine-year-old composer Kenneth Fuchs — a Juilliard colleague of JoAnn Falletta’s as well as English hornist Thomas Stacy — says that the 19-minute “An American Place” “reflects the palette of musical sounds that have developed in the United States during the last hundred years, including popular and classical elements, and is intended to suggest the rich body of music created by the American symphonists who have come before me.” Whew. And so it does, in the most ear-friendly way, as does “Eventide” for English horn and orchestra. Both share the language of neo-Romantics a half-century earlier (Robert Ward and composers out of the Eastman School of Music after Howard Hanson). So too does “Eventide” entail much flutter-tongued double-reed virtuosity from the soloist. A knottier matter is the 12-tone “Out of the Dark” inspired by the paintings of Abstractionist Helen Frankenthaler. The performances by maestra Falletta and the Londoners are truly superb — the sort that contemporary music so seldom attains on first-disc performances.    — Jeff Simon

[Fuchs] is a major composer, I’m convinced, whose music is quintessentially American in the same way that the music of Aaron Copland and William Schuman is. The performances here are first-rate, with an old friend of his, JoAnn Falletta, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

On An American Place:

An American Place is the most recent of the works here; it was premièred by JoAnn Falletta and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra in March 2005.… This is an open-faced, optimistic, even brash piece that makes great use of seventh-chord suspensions, seconds and thirds, whirling strings, skittering winds, pizzicato basses, and brass fanfarade. There is a celebratory atmosphere but there are pauses for suspense, lyricism, melancholy, even tragedy within the work’s nineteen minutes.… This is a marvelous work that will surely find its place in American orchestral concerts, perhaps as a concert opener. It’s one of those pieces that makes you feel better. The LSO’s performance probably could not be bettered.

On Eventide:

The English hornist of the New York Philharmonic, Thomas Stacy, one of the legends of that instrument, has been a friend of Ken Fuchs’s since student days.… Eventide (a concerto for English horn, harp, percussion and string orchestra) is a twenty-one minute, single movement work that shows what Stacy can do.… The strings, mostly tuned percussion (celesta, crotales, chimes, glockenspiel, xylophone) and harp supply a gossamer cushion upon which the English horn limns a meditative picture of surpassing beauty.…

On Out of the Dark:

Out of the Dark (Suite for Chamber Orchestra; 16 minutes long) is a set of three tone poems inspired by three paintings of the New York abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler.… There is more bite to them, more astringency but they work their way “from tension to resolution,” to quote Fuchs. Structurally this involves moving more and more into uncomplicated tonality as the set of pieces progresses. This is satisfying both esthetically and emotionally. There is a very important part for solo horn, played here brilliantly by the LSO’s principal French horn, Timothy Jones.

This is an important issue. Here we have three major pieces by what I am convinced is an important emerging American composer. Strongly recommended.

These quartets from the 1990s by composer-conductor Kenneth Fuchs, Director of the School of Music at the University of Oklahoma, have a lyrical spareness reminiscent of Copland. Open harmonies and disarmingly simple melodies abound, but the structures are sophisticated and satisfying, yielding a distinctly American sound. The American Quartet plays with vividness and obvious affection.

The 1993 Quartet No. 2 has an American impressionism inspired by Robert Motherwell’s collages. No. 3 is a Whitmanian mediation on the poet’s “Whispers of Heavenly Death,” No. 4 an abstract, non-programmatic work in one movement. No. 4 is the most lyrical, tightly structured, and immediately appealing of these quartets. More ambitious is the 1999 Whitman work, a recent addition to the huge literature of musical Whitmania that began during the poet’s lifetime in England with composers like Stanford and gradually spread back to his homeland, where it continues to flourish. Composers from Vaughan Williams to Robert Starer have written vocal settings of these strangely ecstatic death poems, but Fuchs’s is a purely instrumental piece, with the poems acting as inspirations. It begins with a stark Allegro agitato, moves into a pensive and mysterious variation set, and concludes with an exuberant, grandiose finale, a splendid affirmation of Whitmanian optimism in the face of death.

Recorded at the Purchase Recital Hall, a superb venue that enhances many Albany releases, the recording is warm and spacious, making the best possible case for this attractive music. Listen to the transparent, zipping violins and elegant harmonics in the Energico opening of Quartet No. 3 finale, for example. String Quartet recordings don’t get much better than this. The excellent production includes a touching appreciation of Fuchs’s work by his ever-popular colleague, Richard Danielpour.

Years ago when I was teaching in High School in the West Country of the UK, I ran an Arts Association and booked a visiting exhibition of contemporary art of which only one painting remains in my memory, Andrew Wyeth’s evocative painting of Christina’s World. A work with that title by Kenneth Fuchs gives the title to a fine CD by World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles member Gary Green, whose University of Miami Wind Ensemble is accurate, well balanced, with good intonation and some excellent soloists. While I am not sure that for me Fuchs completely recaptures what I recall of the loneliness of Christina’s pose and her illness, he writes a work of over 11 minutes of some substance; much of it is impressionistic, some is minimalist, but I find the scoring attractive, the ideas interesting, and this is a work I would happily recommend.

Of all of the members of the New York Philharmonic invited to participate in Cala’s admirable New York Legends series, Thomas Stacy is one of the few who can truly be called a “legend.” This man has almost defined the English horn for the music world over the last 25 years. He has been a member of the Philharmonic since 1972, a fervent commissioner of new works, teacher, lecturer, and the most recorded English hornist in the world. This recital demonstrates his consummate mastery of the instrument — a burnished, juicy sound, flawless technique, and musicianship second to none.

The blockbuster on this disc is also the first presented, Kenneth Fuchs’s Face of the Night. Nicely expressionistic, lyrical, modal, with hints of minimalism that don’t outstay their welcome, this piece deserves many recordings — but none will be able to compete with Stacy’s evocative, darkly woven tapestry. The chamber group is very supportive, though perhaps a little ragged in a few spots. This is a terrific work.

String quartet writing is alive and well in America. Before I bought this CD I had never heard of Kenneth Fuchs. But members of the American String Quartet are old friends and I typically buy their new releases. I’m glad I did. Fuchs, Director of the School of Music at the University of Oklahoma, and formerly Dean of Students and Academics at the Manhattan School of Music, is a real composer. On the basis of these three quartets, one can say that he has a genuine lyrical gift, as well as a masterful sense of form, expert counterpoint, rhythmic verve, and drama.

The Second Quartet has five movements inspired by five different pieces of Robert Motherwell, whose collages the composer had first seen in New York in 1984. Full-color photographs of the five collages are included in the liner notes and it was helpful to look at them while listening to the music. Fuchs’s style is generally tonal, but with enough spicy dissonance to make the harmonies interesting, and there are even some serial sections which, however, are still tonal-sounding. If I had to compare his sound to any other composer’s, I’d probably have to mention that of Shostakovich; what composer writing quartets in the second half of the 20th century could avoid his influence? Shostakovich’s hollow-eyed terror, however, is missing. And occasionally, as in the second movement, there is a melismatic ecstasy reminiscent of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending. The third movement combines elements of the first two, while responding to “The Marriage,” one of Motherwell’s pieces, and, in the composer’s wry comment, “it ends badly.” The fourth movement functions as the work’s development and leads to the fifth movement, which one could consider the quartet’s recapitulation; the musical landscapes of the earlier movements are recalled in an affirmative mood.

The Third Quartet, in three movements and subtitled “Whispers of Heavenly Death,” was composed “as a gift for the American String Quartet,” after they had toured with the Second Quartet. Each of the movements has an epigram from Whitman’s “Darest Thou Now O Soul.” The materials in the three movements are related, and like the working-out of the materials in Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, the harmonic language becomes more diatonic as the work progresses, with an accompanying easing of tension. Like the Second Quartet, this one ends on an affirmative note.

The Fourth Quartet, subtitled “Bergonzi,” was written for the Bergonzi Quartet, in 1998. Its one ten-minute movement has three distinct sections — Energico — Meno mosso — Vivo — played without interruption. The first section introduces a tremolo figure on the viola followed by a lyrical, almost swooning, figure on the cello and these become the major figures in the succeeding lyrical second and energetic third sections.

This CD probably represents the last ASQ recording that includes their founding cellist, David Geber, who became head of the Manhattan School’s string department in 2001. I haven’t heard his successor, Margo Tatgenhorst, yet, but look forward to hearing the ASQ next week. And, frankly, I’m hoping they will play one of Fuchs’s quartets. As for this particular recording, I can only quote the reviewer in American Record Guide: “Quartet recordings don’t get much better than this.”

When the “New York Legends” recording project permitted Thomas Stacy to choose the repertoire for his own CD, he packed in as much music and as many composers as he could, drawing from the twenty-five-plus world premières and commissions he has already given. One of the twelve New York Philharmonic principals included in Cala Records’ “celebration of the orchestral musician as an individual,” English hornist Stacy had nearly completed twenty-five years with the New York Philharmonic by 1996, when the CD was made. Six composers, four of whom are American and still living, wrote the almost eighty minutes of music.…

Kenneth Fuchs’s Face of the Night opens with a raw oboe obligato, played with a wide-open sound. Percussion (vibes, cymbals, drums, bells…), harp, and three strings spell the oboe and extend the expressive range of this large, programmatic piece, which, according to its composer, represents moods suggested by Robert Motherwell’s painting of the same name. Fuchs, currently a dean at the Manhattan School of Music, has a distinct compositional voice that holds the piece together through its changing levels of agitation and anguish. The accompanying ensemble makes for an efficient palette of colors that add substantially to the work’s emotion. Notably effective is the turning point, a bit past the middle, when the frantic oboe dissolves into ringing percussive sonorities, only to re-emerge on the same pitch as an English horn. This gorgeous moment sounds even better because of Stacy’s ability to meld the two instruments; I had a vivid picture of an oboe shape-shifting into its tenor brother. Fuchs weaves the English horn through a string counterpoint before giving it up to more cadenza passage work with undulating harp. Slowly shifting tonal areas bring a sense of peace, but Fuchs wants the composition to end with a recapitulation of the negative emotion of its beginning. He dissolves the fleeting repose with sinister interjections by the drums and an unresolved final note in the English horn.