Cunningham: Gallery (CD review)

Three ballets and the Gastein Masterwork. Robert Ian Winstin, Prague Radio Orchestra; Petr Vronsky, Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra; Vladimir Lande, St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra. Navona Records NV5893.

Composer, pianist, and author Michael G. Cunningham, (b. 1937) is also a Professor of Theory and Composition, holding a Bachelor of Music degree (1959) from Wayne State University in Detroit, a Master of Music (1961) from the University of Michigan, and a Doctor of Music (1973) from Indiana University. Between 1967 and 1973 he taught theory and composition at universities in Michigan, California, Kansas, and Indiana. Since 1973 he has been in residence at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. The present disc contains a gallery of four of his works: three ballets and the Gastein Masterwork, each of them performed by one of the ensembles listed above.

According to his biography, “Cunningham has written several books on theory and composition, including The Inner World of Traditional Theory, Technique for Composers, Steps Towards Bach's Counterpoint, Medieval Creativity and Renaissance Counterpoint, and The Romantic Century. Considered an expert in the area of American popular song, 1920-80, he occasionally teaches a General Education course on that subject. As a composer, he has created music for nearly every medium, having written over 160 works, with over 100 instrumental compositions published by five different publishers. These pieces include thirteen works for orchestra, four operas, four other works for the stage, many works for voice and chorus, as well as a number of arrangements, and he has been a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers since 1969.”

First up on the album’s program is the brief, single-movement ballet Nyadina, performed by the Prague Radio Orchestra. Cunningham based the story on a 1938 film ballet about a beautiful nymph, and, in fact, like most of the music on the disc, it has a mysterious, impressionistic, cinematic feel to it, a sort of Debussy quality, very pleasant as it floats gently along. The conductor and orchestra handle it lightly, retaining its wispy, willowy, ethereal charms, increasing the tension toward the end.

Next is the three-movement ballet She, performed by the Moravian Philharmonic. This one the composer based on the celebrated adventure novel by H. Rider Haggard about the beautiful, ageless queen. You may remember the 1965 movie version of it with Ursula Andress. In any case, Cunningham’s music feels ruggedly venturesome, well representing the melodrama of the story. The players appear to take the work quite seriously, too, without exaggeration, and offer up a presentation of program music worthy of any Hollywood blockbuster.

After that is the single-movement ballet Chrysalis at Mardi Gras, performed by the St. Petersburg State Symphony. It’s a moralistic fantasy tale, a Cinderella-like story, rather more rambunctious than the rest of the selections but quite enchanting in its telling. With its relentlessly throbbing rhythms, it tends to come off the weightiest on the disc, with the St. Petersburg musicians doing their best to make it seem as eloquent as possible.

The disc ends with the four-movement symphonic work Gastein Masterwork, performed by the Moravian Philharmonic. Here, Cunningham offers a fanciful arrangement of what Franz Schubert might have written had he completed a proposed symphony he was working on while in Gemunden-Gastein in the Tyrolean mountains. Schubert probably turned it into a piano sonata, which Cunningham uses as a launching pad for his own music. It’s easily the best thing in the album, sounding very classically Romantic in structure, mood, and gesture. But could any composer or orchestra go wrong working from Schubert? Only in the finale did I find any small lack of Schubertian lilt in the playing.

OK, you might ask, if Cunningham has written so much material, why don’t people know him better? The short answer: Life is unfair. There is a delightfully meandering quality about some of his music that may remind one of the works of early twentieth-century English composer Frederick Delius, and even Delius’s music, championed by no less a proponent than Sir Thomas Beecham, was never all that popular. Anyway, Cunningham’s music, at least on this disc, is imaginative and easily accessible.  It’s worth a listen.

Navona recorded the album over a period of several years from 2008 to 2012 at Radio Studio in Prague, Czech Republic; Reduta Hall, Olomouc, Czech Republic; and Studio 1, House of Radio, St. Petersburg, Russia. The sonic results, nonetheless, are fairly consistent.

The sound of the Prague Radio Orchestra displays a good separation of instruments, without appearing compartmentalized. There’s a sweet, natural, fairly clear air about it. The Moravian Philharmonic sounds like a bigger ensemble than the Prague group, the pieces they play probably scored for a larger group. It’s not quite as transparent a sound as the Prague Orchestra, being a bit warmer and softer, but it produces a solid dynamic thrust and wide frequency extensions at both ends of the spectrum. Although the St. Petersburg State Orchestra tends to sound the loudest and somewhat less smooth than the others, it’s still quite good in a more modest way.

One thing I didn’t particularly like: Navona decided not to include a printed booklet with the disc, electing instead to put all the information on the CD itself. So if you place the disc in your computer, you can find text notes on the works, study scores of the music, even some wallpaper and ring tones. While this may be all fine and dandy, I’d rather have had the text notes in my hand to read and enjoy without having to go to the computer screen or print everything out.

To hear a brief excerpt from this album, click here:


JJP

Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

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"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa