The two distinct halves of the Vista Philharmonic at Groton Center on Saturday eschewed any discernible correlation. Conductor Bruce Hangen opened with wholly 20^th-century American works, whereas, in the second half, he led us into ripe realms of the 19^th-century French Romantic with the rarity, Alexandre Guilmant’s Symphony No. 2, Organ. Hangen and his players capably rendered the very different musical languages; Randy Steere was ever alert to the organ’s role in the final work: sometimes simply another member of the orchestra, other times a soloist enjoying the spotlight. The hall’s acoustics found a happy balance between clarity and responsive ambience. This reviewer found the lack of a printed program (titles and/or tempos were flashed on a screen behind and above the orchestra at the start of each movement) a mild annoyance.

Hangen spoke ahead of each work of the three American composer-conductors born between 1918 and 1930, indicating the professional ties between among them as well as key details of their works. David Amram, who celebrated his 95^th birthday the day after this performance, is a musical polyglot, working with top-rank folk, jazz, country, pop, and classical musicians as player, composer, arranger, and conductor since the 1950s. His American Dance Suite (1986) sampled three of the many indigenous genres of American music, focusing on dance. The first movement, Cheyenne, featured stylized Native American melodic figures and drumming early on, later adding a latter-20^th-century tonal style. Hangen and the orchestra made a convincing case for the fusion of classical and indigenous styles. The second movement, Blues, for the strings only, poured out a hypnotic threnody gently tinged with the harmony of the title. Hangen brought forth an emotional statement from Amram’s multiplicity of textures, ranging from silky legato to pizzicato. Concertmaster Alice Hallstrom shone in her major solos as did the quartet formed by the principals (with second violin Stanley Silverman, viola Amelia Hollander Ames, and cello Young Sook Lee). The final movement, Cajun, began with a chuckling staccato piccolo accompanied only by soft percussion. This had the feel of an Irish jig on the penny whistle: the Cajuns were in fact French-speaking Canadians who settled in Louisiana but descended from the Celtic region of Brittany in France. The players and Hangen conveyed an infectious sense of fun as the rest of the orchestra (including more percussion) gradually joined in, working up to a rousing conclusion.

Gunther Schuller (1925-2015), the first half’s central figure, acted as pedagogue to David Amram and rivalled even Leonard Bernstein in the diversity of his musical activities (composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, educator, publisher, and jazz musician). Moreover, it was Schuller who invited Bruce Hangen to study at the Tanglewood Music Center where the young conductor numbered him, Seiji Ozawa, and Leonard Bernstein among his teachers. As its name might imply, An Arc Ascending depicts a progression from darkness to light and, specifically, the lengthening of daylight between the winter and summer solstices. Conductor and orchestra evoked the darkness of the winter solstice via subterranean rumblings of the lowest woodwind and brass; a variety of solo instruments such as alto flute, piano, contra bassoon, English horn, etc. lent distinctive colors. The shifting of colors, like that of the seasons, happened almost gradually enough to be imperceptible. Eventually, though, it dawned on one that the solos soon featured primarily upper strings and treble instruments such as trumpet, oboe, and flute. In place of low, shadowy dissonance, the parallel rising and falling figures now emerged as polytonal (Schuller’s notes mention the “iridescent” simultaneous keys of B major, D-flat major, and C major). The excitement and dynamic built, albeit not until the last third, until Schuller gave us a climactic resolution that dropped the adjacent keys of the one row he used in his entire career ((C-sharp , D, G, B-flat, E, F, A, B, G-sharp, F-sharp, E-flat, C) [listen HERE], for the final fortissimo C major chord, reminiscent of the glorious C major sunrise at the end Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. Hangen and the Vista Philharmonic rendered this work more meaningful and vivid than a master orchestrator’s tour of the orchestra.

Instead of Leonard Bernstein’s richly rewarding Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, Hangen provided a refreshing experience with the much-less-often heard immediate predecessor, the Symphonic Suite from “On the Waterfront” (1954), derived from Bernstein’s only film score. Like Amram and Schuller, Bernstein was a musical omnivore whose works cleverly combine multiple genres. He surely found inspiration in this film noir’s screenplay which deals unflinchingly with the corruption and frequent violence attending the lives of New Jersey longshoremen. Michael Bellofatto’s opening unaccompanied horn solo, bluesy and yearning, set a lonely tone at the beginning. Quite soon, however, a fiercely motoric rhythmic sequence broke out Presto barbaro in the percussion, adding the storm and stress that form the core of the film’s plot. At the first climax, Bernstein gave the full orchestra powerful syncopations over the relentless percussion riff. In these perhaps most technically demanding passages of the evening, Hangen and his players rose with visceral excitement and virtuosity. Later, in complete contrast, principal flute Melissa Mielens and harpist Maria Ren gave us meltingly beautiful love music developed in due course by the string section and finally full orchestra. I marveled at how seamlessly the composer used the love music to transition back to tension and conflict, aided of course by the skillful, sensitive playing of the ensemble under Hangen. The performers demonstrated that this score was no mere stepping-stone to West Side Story but rather a masterpiece in its own right.

After intermission came the largest work and surely the greatest object of curiosity, the Symphony No. 2 in A Major of Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911) for organ and orchestra. The composer took his own Organ Sonata No. 8 as source material for this symphony, but unlike the popular “Organ Symphony” of Camille Saint-Saëns, Guilmant quite often assigns the organ a supporting role, merely enriching the orchestral texture. Groton Hill Music Center’s new hall (2022) features a Virtual Pipe Organ, without pipes, which uses Hauptwerk software to digitally reproduce the sounds of 15 real pipe organs from various countries, periods, and aesthetics; the organist can select the organ best suited to the particular repertoire he or she is playing [read BMInt’s technically detailed interview with Steere HERE]. In this instance,  Steere utilized the sample set from the grande orgue at  St. Étienne in Caen, France (1885) by the greatest French Romantic organbuilder, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll [read a description of the sampled organ HERE]. Guilmant composed his first movement’s introduction on hunting horn-call figures in the strings, with other instruments joining in to increase the dynamic until the organ made its grand fortissimo entry. Though its powerful ensemble more closely resembled Ruffatti than Cavaillé-Coll, the effect was electric nonetheless. The first true organ solo, offering a little repose during a vigorous orchestral fugue, pleased the ear with its triplet arpeggios in the hands and a new, sustained theme in the pedals. The remainder of the movement alternated homophonic textures with polyphonic, forte with piano, and the permutations of organ and orchestra, and finished with a much broader, grand coda. The Adagio con affetto second movement commenced with a wistful, melancholic organ solo in F-sharp minor. Steere used rubato sparingly but to satisfying effect. Hangen drew considerable “affetto” from the players in a lengthy orchestral interlude. Ultimately, the soft re-entry of the organ brought us back to the opening minor theme and a movingly attenuated ending. The Scherzo proceeded briskly with abundant high spirits and humor (the many ascending and descending scales of solo instruments suggesting the rise and fall of laughter). The organ apparently only contributed to this movement by doubling the bass line with the pedals in the smoother, less rambunctious trio, while the orchestra gave us a most enjoyable divertissement in the outer sections. The fourth movement introduced a new but not unrelated key, E major, beginning with a noble organ solo with the orchestra subtly joining, eventually. Via a pianissimo bridge, the movement proceeded without pause into the final one, Guilmant employing some surprisingly elaborate (made still more so by the indistinct pitches in the organ’s descending pedal line) Wagnerian harmonic legerdemain to take us merely from E major as tonic to E major as dominant and resolving in another virtuosic A major orchestral fugue. For this crowning section of the symphony, Hangen, the strings, and larger orchestra didn’t hold back, playing with unflagging energy but maintaining clarity with helpful marcato articulation. While harmonic purists might have smiled at the over-the-top triple-forte harmonic progressions leading into the coda, the great majority of listeners were dazzled—only to be further astounded by the organ’s pedal part for the first and only time turning über-brilliant with scales, roulades, arpeggios, etc. I couldn’t help but think of Charles Ives’s satire of organ virtuosos in his “Variations on America” (the one marked “As fast as the pedals can go”), but Steere’s execution was spectacular, putting aside any such minor considerations as straitlaced good taste. My congratulations to all the musicians and gratitude for reintroducing a major organ and orchestra work that can stand alongside the few standards played regularly.

Geoffrey Wieting holds Bachelor’s degrees in organ and Latin from Oberlin College and a Master’s degree in collaborative piano from New England Conservatory. He is Organist of First Parish Church of Weston as well as a freelance organist, collaborative pianist and vocal coach. He sings with Coro Allegro and the Copley Singers and serves on the Board of Directors of the Old West Organ Society.