A sense of occasion enveloped the substantial crowd at Boston Chamber Symphony’s Saturday night performance at Grace Episcopal Church in Newton, the occasion being two long-overdue revivals, under the baton of Avlana Eisenberg, of two major works by one of the greats of the Second New England School of composers, Arthur Foote (1853-1937). His Suite in E major and Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, which received its Boston premiere [Moore performed the concerto in Fall River in 1985.], sandwiched a fairly popular symphony by Schubert.
Of the two Foote compositions, the Suite for string orchestra, op. 63 (1909)[i], is the better known, having been first performed by the Boston Symphony under Max Fiedler, and many times thereafter during the composer’s lifetime and for a time afterwards, with the last full BSO performance in 1982 (the second movement, a combined scherzo and slow movement, is sometimes played separately, most recently by the Pops under John Williams in 1986). So yes, “most popular” is a fleeting thing, with nothing but crickets for over 40 years. The BMInt archives show no performances covered since its 2008 founding. It has been recorded, though, first by Koussevitzky and the BSO (but not remastered, so scratch alert if you want to listen from the vintage phonograph), more recently by Kenneth Klein and the London Symphony Orchestra, and various others.
There is no reason at all for this neglect: it’s a strong piece with a neo-classical aspect, on a par with Grieg’s Holberg Suite and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade in D. In three movements, it begins its Praeludium with one of Foote’s loveliest and most evocative tunes, with a yearning upward extension at the end and a somewhat provocative absence of a clear cadence. The youthful orchestra under Eisenberg rendered it with mellow fluidity. The Praeludium is fairly brief, in “short sonata” form with barely any development (you can also read it as a type of ABA), and a truncated recapitulation that subsides in intensity and volume and then (in most performances, including this one) glides with the briefest of pauses directly into the Pizzicato and Adagietto. The fusion of scherzo (very well and precisely pizzed by the players) and slow movement was not unprecedented, but it was unusual, and Foote achieved it (and its mirror image in briefly recapping the A section) with great economy. The Adagietto is the heart, not only of the movement but of the Suite as a whole, and while its thematic material is curiously not that memorable its emotional claim is great, with rich Wagnerian harmony and intricate interweaving of lines; Eisenberg elicited shapely phrasing and dynamics with her expressive stick technique, evincing a poignancy free of schmalz. The finale is a fugue, whose sturdy theme is saved from academic dryness by the gradually emerging witticism of Foote’s rhythms, inversions and other embellishments. Foote and his generation of composers have too long endured the disinformation campaign waged by post-1900 upstarts claiming them to be insufficiently “American”; puckish Yankee wit suffuses their output.
If one were to go by its prevalence on the BSO database of performances, Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, D. 485 (1816) is the third most popular of that composer’s oeuvre. Written at age 19 when he was enthralled with Mozart, any clearly Schubertian features can be hard to tease out: the arch of a melody here, a lightning chord change to an obscure key there; nonetheless its fizzing, bubbly insouciance is infectious and exhibits the depth of Schubert’s engagement with his muse. There’s a good analysis here, apart from its terse statement about the finale, so we won’t go into depth in that end of the pool. Eisenberg adopted fairly (very?) brisk tempi throughout, to better effect in some places than in others; we found the slow movement somewhat forced and deoxygenated, and in places the ornaments and scalar passages got a bit blurry. At the same time, she strove for an appropriate lyricism and warmth, particularly in the folklike trio of the “minuet” (scare quotes because allegro molto is not a tempo marking one would associate with a real minuet). The finale was as sprightly and bouncy as one would wish, leaving the audience refreshed.
In structuring a concert presentation, it is conventional to put a concerto as the closing item on the first half, with some meaty symphony or suchlike for the second part. The change in order on this occasion was fully warranted, with Julian Schwarz as soloist with the “Boston-area” premiere, only 132 years late, of Foote’s Cello Concerto in G Minor, op. 33 (1887-1894). Because there is as yet no commercial recording of this work (though Schwarz’s with the Buffalo Philharmonic is due for release in a few months), with only two live-performance recordings available, here and here, and because of its importance, we’ll try to give more detail than we might otherwise.
Most references to this concerto, when there are any, give only 1894 as its date. Yet, Foote started writing it in 1887 and inscribed it in his catalogue as op. 16. It’s not clear whether he finished it at the time, but on a commission from the Chicago Symphony for something to perform at the World Columbian Exposition (1893) he either completed or revised the op. 16 as op. 33. In the event the premiere took place about a year after the exposition closed, with Theodore Thomas as CSO conductor and Bruno Steindel—the CSO principal, formerly principal with the Berlin Philharmonic—as soloist. Foote never published the concerto as a whole, but only the slow movement in piano reduction under the name of Romanza for cello and piano. The earlier date is important because it establishes that this was the first cello concerto by an American composer (or at least one of whom the world has heard), placing it alongside the Victor Herbert second concerto, a masterpiece also premiered in 1894. The only critical notice of the Foote premiere we were able to access comes from W.S.B. Matthews writing for the Music monthly, who said “Although not gratefully written for the instrument it contains much enjoyable music, and is treated admirably for the orchestra. It is a serious and important work.” The CSO never performed it again, and archives we have searched turned up reference to a performance by the San Francisco Symphony in 1917, presumably under Alfred Hertz, with Horace Britt as soloist. The piece is unique in Foote’s output as his only orchestral work in one of the grand forms: he never wrote a symphony, nor any other concerto; the only other large-scale pieces were his suites and tone poems. Why he was so diffident about following up with publication is a mystery.
In the 1980s cellist Douglas Moore became interested in Foote, who had written a substantial amount of music for cello though he was himself a pianist and organist. Moore researched and edited a collection of Foote chamber cello music, which he recorded and published, as well as an edition of the concerto; he performed it with the Rochester (MN) Symphony, as reflected on the first of the two recordings mentioned above. In a conversation with Schwarz we learned that he found the score at the Fleisher Collection in Philadelphia (there were handwritten parts that he was assured were not usable), and made his own set of parts for his own performances.[ii] [iii]
The concerto opens, Allegro non troppo, with an austere rocking motif in the orchestra fixated on a minor third, followed by the first of several cadenzas, a structural device in this work that makes it, if not unique, then certainly unusual. Schwarz was strongly in charge right off the bat, with a rich Romantic sensibility; if this piece is ungratefully written for the cello, as Matthews thought, you would never know it. It’s virtuosic to be sure, but that’s what virtuosos do. The motif, it turns out, though it recurs before the recapitulation, is not the actual first subject; that, derived from the cadenza, appears right after it, with two principal motifs, a triplet and a descending figure much beloved of Romantic composers like Grieg. The second subject, in Foote’s signature lyrical vein, works with a triplet figure derived from the first part of the opening theme, which then recaps before segueing to the next cadenza. The positioning and integration of cadenzas into concertos seems to have been an abiding fixation of 19th-century composers, and Foote’s process is quite persuasive, though it sometimes leaves the orchestra a bit in the lurch. Eisenberg’s accompaniment here was quite appropriate, suspended where necessary but never dully deferential. The orchestra had clearly spent a good deal of time getting all this right, and the match of soloist and orchestra left nothing to cavil at.
The first movement breaks to the second, attacca. By 1887 or 1894 this was not so unusual any more (thank you, Mendelssohn; hat tip, Saint-Saëns), but given that there’s no recapitulation of the second subject, some commenters have opined that the movement is really just a ternary form, which is also fine (thank you, Bruch). This andante con moto is also passionately lyrical, with both themes of the repeated AB structure attractively affecting. The playing was exquisite.
The finale begins big and bravura, as one would hope. Though designated allegro comodo, it proceeds swiftly to a tune imparting a clear American sensibility, motivic and harmonic structure, with a little rhythmic fillip at the end. Foote then presents another theme, chorale-ish with a concluding dotted rhythm. This movement seems to be in short sonata form: the recapitulation follows virtually immediately after the exposition and a connecting passage and is itself followed by the last of the cadenzas, this one more conventional in position and function, as a transition to the bright G major coda. The appreciative audience elicited from Schwarz an encore, a gentle and moving performance of the Allemande from Bach’s sixth cello suite.
We congratulate Schwarz and the BCSO for bringing this major addition to the cello repertoire back to life (perhaps, in deference to Moore, we should say, again) and we look forward to his upcoming recording. Now it’s time for our major orchestras to get with the program.
Vance R. Koven studied music at Queens College and New England Conservatory, and law at Harvard. A composer and practicing attorney, he was for many years the chairman of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble.
[i] Strictly speaking the op. 63 suite should be labeled as Suite No. 4, with the three others being another string suite in E, op. 12 (1886, premiered by the BSO under Wilhelm Gericke), one in D major, op. 21 (1889, BSO under Artur Nikisch), and one in D minor, op. 36 (1896, BSO under Emil Paur). In addition, there is something called the Serenade in E major, op. 25 (1893, BSO/Nikisch), which combined the op. 12 with two movements from op. 21.
[ii] Patrick Meadows realized the performing edition based on the manuscript copy with corrections to the composer’s score by cellist Douglas Moore held in the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music at the Free Library of Philadelphia, with their permission, and with final references to the composer’s monograph held in the New York Public Library.
[iii] For more on Moore and Foote with some score images click HERE.