My Truth on "In Truth"

Let’s begin this review of the most recent PSO recording by judging its cover. CDs are not books, after all, and first impressions may hint at hidden truths. Displaying the Symphony’s nested arch logo, the mid-2015 release is titled In Truth: Lucas Richman (Albany Records, CD Troy1583). It contains concertos for piano, oboe, and cello by Richman, who also conducts.

In their forceful purity, the white words “IN TRUTH” balance the cover photograph of whites and greys—a snowy forest road with a solitary, middle ground, human silhouette treading determinedly on foot. The angled light glistens on the thicket to the right, contrasting with the darkened forest to the left. A foggy blue sky mediates the snow and shadow, the truth and the falsehood. But wait--the distant silhouette appears darker than any grey in the photo. Has it been Photoshopped?

What truth is there in this photograph? In what way can a posed photo of a person walking along a partly plowed road, carrying a bag as if to go to work, be considered truthful? A glance at the cover invites doubt, in turn, of the music’s integrity.

Until recently the music director of the Knoxville Symphony, Richman served under Mariss Jansons as assistant and resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony between 1998 and 2004. In 2011 he won a Grammy for Best Crossover Album. He is an accomplished conductor, and is perhaps best described as a crossover composer, one whose music bridges the classical tradition with a commercial or commercially viable spiritual tradition. The coalition of “truth” and commerce in this music speaks loudly to the absence of musical tradition on this recording. Put plainly, the music is shockingly anachronistic. It is not only romantic in its aspirational moods, but romantic in its mid-nineteenth-century style. And yet these concertos lack Mendelssohn’s panache and Schumann’s creativity. Such, alas, is the truth.

Lucas Richman’s liner notes clearly show the depth of conviction he invests in his music, with each work singing a melody that represents a Jewish prayer. Some listeners may hear the music’s lush and melodic textures as beautiful, but I hear the harmonic and timbral vocabulary as willfully inoffensive and anodyne in its adherence to stylistic anachronism. It differs from music of the mid-1800s mainly be being far more mellow. ’Tis a language of a bygone world, clichéd when ’tis today unfurled. It speaks to me less of truth than of fortune. Richman is a singularly lucky composer to be able to draw upon the skill of the Pittsburgh Symphony to play such unremarkable music. Richman’s is not quite the “pretendy” classical music that Philip Clark excoriates in his essays for Gramophone:

Fusions of minimalism, ambient electronica, pop structures drizzled with world music “flavas” – Karl Jenkins, Max Richter, Ludovico Einaudi, Roxanna Panufnik – have become a ubiquitous sub-genre with relevance to the future of classical music only in the sense that EL James is relevant to the future of the novel. No boundaries are being pushed at all. Instead, this is a corporate, boardroom idea of music designed specifically to shift units of CDs.

Though Richman certainly pushes no boundaries in this music, his music does not seek to be crossover in any way, though it does evoke film music’s tendency to avoid attracting attention to itself.

The recording’s most successful work by far—an enjoyable and admirable work—is the Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra (2006). Subtitled The Clearing it is a seventeen-minute, single-movement tone poem that seems to begin in medias res. Commissioned by Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida, the Symphony’s principal oboe, The Clearing refers to the peace evoked in Psalm 23. DeAlmeida sings with an astonishing tone, holding exquisitely sculpted high notes, each phrase blooming delicately. A neoclassical canon between the oboe and the bassoon introduces the middle section, which is darker and more agitated than the pastoral opening. Its simplicity recalls Virgil Thomson’s film music. Gestures toward dark climactic moments resolve unexpectedly into quiet passages until they finally open into a passage that almost abandons the tightly wound motivic repetitions—but it remains disciplined and Apollonian rather than permitting the underground Dionysian energy to flow freely. A slow solo cadenza then unfolds a gorgeous melody, a kind of developing thought that aims for peace and a higher understanding. According to Richman, this passage “intones the entire psalm in the form of a prayer-aria.” More and more clans of the orchestra enter until a slowly rocking waltz takes shape. To conclude, a faster, vaguely oriental dance emerges with strong percussion and an ostinato figure, a Dionysian bacchanal that sounds like a draft from Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila.

Richman provides a fascinating program note for his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, “In Truth” (2013). He writes that it:

reflects upon truths perceived, truths accepted and truths verified, with the piano soloist serving as protagonist who alternates between abiding by society’s universal “truth” and railing against those who create new “truths” so as to avoid personal culpability.

What motivates this indictment is unclear, but additional paragraphs describe the program of each movement in greater detail. The first movement, “To One’s Self,” begins dramatically, but soon slows down and obsessively repeats its motifs in a relentless diatonicism, regular meter, and bass-heavy Beethovenian orchestration. The second theme involves a tender tune in the piano that is echoed in the oboe. From underneath, a rhythmic tattoo emerges, as in the first movement of Beethoven Five. The movement alternates between these poles of drama and pastoral love, reconciling the two quickly in a kind of half-heroic, half-sentimental triumph. The second movement, “To One’s World,” begins with a piano solo that echoes a motif from the first movement and soon transforms into a stormy evocation of jazz, a heavy-set cousin to Rhapsody in Blue, or perhaps a nod to Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, “Age of Anxiety.” The third movement, “To One’s Spirit,” opens with a quiet, intense, and mysterious motif in the brass that softens in a solo violin. Eventually a bell and the rippling piano over long-held string chords relax the music into its fundamentally pastoral, peaceful character. Richman spins out the same motif over and over again in a broad, slow-motion sequence, asking more of his gestures than they’re able to sustain. His ability to craft transitions from mood to mood, however, is highly skillful. The climax sounds like the score to a Stephen Spielberg movie; it is pops music inserted into the mold of a classical (actually nineteenth-century romantic) concerto. Jeffrey Siegel is immensely agile and musical as the soloist, and the orchestra shines as well. For a 28-minute concerto, however, the paucity of ideas challenges even these performers to make a convincing case for the music.

The CD concludes with Three Pieces for Cello and Orchestra (2013 in this configuration of movements), with each piece lasting six minutes. It opens dramatically in a movement labeled “Declaration,” which serves as a prelude by alluding to the “Sh’ma Yisrael” [“Hear, O Israel”], a kind of utterance of Jewish convocation. The cello’s rising music has no clear adversary in the portentous orchestra, making the purpose of its heroic character unclear. “Prayer,” the second piece, could be mistaken for a missing movement from the Dvorak Cello Concerto, its modal melancholy and dotted rhythms eventually clearing space for a beautiful solo passage that culminates in a final mood of affirmation. The last movement, “Freylach,” meaning both “happy” and “klezmer,” starts with a dance rhythm and a moto perpetuo in the cello, perhaps nodding to Shostakovich. A klezmer clarinet then duets with the soloist and grows into an eastern aksak dance. Israeli cellist Inbal Segev’s sound is strong, focused, and sure-footed.

This recording interests me not for Richman’s music, though much of The Clearing is gently “advanced” in its language, with interesting harmonies, thoughtful orchestration, and a winning melody. Nor does it spur me into a discourse on truth in art. After all, the phrase “in truth” usually precedes a statement of personal conviction, rather than consensus fact. Nobody says “In truth, it snowed today,” but they do say “In truth, I enjoy the snow.” Let me go on record for applauding Richman’s creativity and his absolute right to compose any music he chooses, barring copyright infringement.

This recording interests me largely for how it represents the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The liner note tells the story of how the sponsors of the premiere performance of the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, followed up their initial generosity with the question, “What it would take to record the work?” Through Richman’s long association with the PSO, the recording of three Richman works was arranged.

In short, the petaline Pittsburghers have undoubtedly done a favor both to Maestro Richman’s career and to his Knoxville benefactors by lending their talents to music of a style and quality that do not merit this kind of expert treatment (even if the CD is on Albany Records, a common label for new music, rather than their more typical label these days of Exton or Reference). Maestro Richman’s polished leadership of the orchestra is impressive and generous as well.

But what does it say about the PSO that it can be convinced to record music of such modest musical interest? And what does it say about control over the recorded legacy of the PSO that well-meaning patrons, apparently from Knoxville, can sponsor such lightweight music, music that is at heart for a pops orchestra or a film soundtrack, but that bloats itself into quasi-symphonic proportions? Does the PSO wish to become this generation’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra by diluting its artistic mission? This is music perhaps from a true believer, but not from a true composer, a devotée of the state of the art. This is music that is too simple and that seeks too hard to please, and is thus not music that speaks to me of truth or authenticity. As such, its recording is a vanity project. Could the benefactors not be directed to channel their munificence toward a project that reflects better on the Pittsburgh Symphony?

Without Maestro Richman’s connections to deep pockets and to a symphony, this music never would have been recorded. There is plenty of far more accomplished music that deserves such special treatment but that does not receive it, raising questions about what obligations a symphony has to living composers and how an orchestra controls its image and its recorded legacy. I applaud the PSO for recording music by a living composer, but am still waiting for a recent PSO recording to feature music from the twentieth- or twenty-first centuries.