George Walker
came of age during the era of High Modernism, and despite shifting values in the worlds of both African American music and concert music more generally, he never abandoned that mode. Remarkably, two of the works here (the
Sinfonia No. 4
and
Sinfonia No. 5
) were composed during his tenth decade. His style is densely contrapuntal, atonal, and generally thorny;
Cleveland Orchestra
conductor
Franz Welser-Moest
has said that it is "tricky, it's difficult, it's demanding, it's challenging, and there is an intensity and a real voice which I enjoy enormously."
Welser-Moest
does the music justice with edgy performances that do not foreclose a certain Romantic impulse in
Lilacs
,
Walker
's soprano-and-orchestra setting of
Walt Whitman
's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," and allows ample space for the deeply woven quotations of African-American vernacular material. The live recording in Cleveland's Severance Hall sounds great, and everywhere there is a sense of the kind of deep commitment necessary to put this difficult music across. The
's physical packaging, with attractive graphics and substantial essays on each piece, is presented in a children's book-sized package. It will not fit on a CD shelf, but it is an interesting affirmation by the orchestra of the value of the physical artifact (digital though it may be) in an era of streaming music. ~ James Manheim