Ooh! Review a CD!

William Schuman's Symphony No. 9 has been on my regular playlist long enough--just look at the listening journal entries! Still, I've had great affection for this composer since I was a schoolboy and got to play in a band that performed his George Washington Bridge. In fact, the first time I bought compact disks, one contained his seventh symphony. This CD is a recent acquisition, of course, featuring both his fourth and ninth symphonies as well as two short orchestral works, Orchestra Song and Circus Overture, performed by the Seattle Symphony with Gerard Schwarz conducting.

Mr. Schwarz has been a friend to mid-20th-century composers when it comes to recordings and he keeps that reputation intact here. We're lucky to get a band as good as the Seattle group for a relatively obscure composer like the late Mr. Schuman--especially on the budget label Naxos. This is a sign of the changing fortunes of the classical music recording industry. A few years ago, Naxos would have recorded these works with some obscure East European orchestra of dubious standards. Still, the Seattle is not exactly the Berlin Philharmonic and while the winds and percussion are superb, the string sound isn't ideal at times--given the thick harmonies, Schuman works need rich string sounds.

William Schuman (never to be confused with Romantic composer Robert Schumann) is a unique voice in American composition. A former president of the Juilliard Music School, Mr. Schuman wrote remarkable orchestral works with clotted, dense harmonies that seem to sometimes possess a life of their own, sounding as if they are in motion even when unmoving. He always had clear ideas about using the sections of the orchestra as individual units and these works are mostly evidence of that mature style: the brass soars, the woodwinds ornament, the percussion thumps and jingles, and the strings surge. I've never seen works from Mr. Schuman as easy, tuneful romps (OK, even the brisk passages with complex rhythms seem to lumber). These frequently lack humor, but they strain against the bonds of traditional harmony and rhythm, even as they conform to them (this isn't chaotic stuff). To me, this is the sound of mid-century, industrial America.

Overall, the works here are strong, if not Mr. Schuman's best. The orchestra is good and the conducting is first-rate.

7 out of 10

CDs listened to today:

• Bill Frisell Quartet: (eponymous)
• Frederic Chopin: Nocturnes, disk 1
• Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band: XXL
• William Schuman: Symphony No. 10
• Sofia Gubaidulina: 'Stimmen... Verstummen'