The Royal Scottish National Orchestra teams up with its Assistant Conductor Kellen Gray to record works by three of the twentieth century’s greatest African-American voices. Released to coincide with Black History Month, the two symphonies by William Levi Dawson and William Grant Still proved to be fundamental in the utilisation of Afro-American idioms within the symphonic form. Each composer focused on one of the two original staples of African-American music: folk and jazz. William Levi Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony takes its inspiration from West African folk idioms, American Negro spirituals and early African-American folk rhythms and songs from Gullah culture. William Grant Still’s Symphony no.1 draws its influence from elements popular in jazz and pre-jazz. Although the latter is the more well-known figure in American music, Dawson was every bit as significant in the timeline of African American music, and his only published symphony is astonishingly mature for a composer’s earliest efforts at symphonic writing. This programme also celebrates the centenary of George Walker’s birth with the inclusion of his Lyric for Strings.

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Dawson: Negro Folk Symphony (1934, rev. 1952): 1. The Bond of Africa
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Dawson: Negro Folk Symphony (1934, rev. 1952): 2. Hope in the Night
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Dawson: Negro Folk Symphony (1934, rev. 1952): 3. O, Le’ Me Shine, Shine Like a Morning Star!
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Walker: Lyric for Strings (1946, rev. 1990)
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Still: Symphony No.1 ‘Afro-American’ (1931): 1. Longing. Moderato assai
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Still: Symphony No.1 ‘Afro-American’ (1931): 2. Sorrow. Adagio
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Still: Symphony No.1 ‘Afro-American’ (1931): 3. Humor. Animato
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Still: Symphony No.1 ‘Afro-American’ (1931): 4. Aspiration. Lento, con risoluzione

Europadisc Review

The latest release from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra is devoted to three of the most powerful voices from the first two generations of African American composers to be widely performed by major orchestras. Indeed, the symphonies by William Grant Still (1895–1978) and William Levi Dawson (1899–1990) enjoyed distinguished premieres in the 1930s, and both have been recorded in recent years on the Chandos (Neeme Järvi in Detroit) and Naxos labels. The RSNO’s Assistant Conductor, Kellen Gray, has now brought them together in a perfect coupling, along with the single-movement Lyric for Strings by the late George Walker (1922–2018) to form a compelling hour-long programme – a further welcome sign that works by African American musicians are at last getting the attention they so clearly merit.

The earliest work here is the Symphony no.1 (‘Afro-American’) by Still, a composer frequently referred to as ‘the dean of African American composers’. Born in Woodville, Mississippi, where his father was town bandmaster, after the latter’s death Still grew up in Arkansas. At his mother’s insistence he began to study medicine, but the pull of music was too strong. After service in World War I, he developed a successful career as an arranger for theatre and radio, while also studying with the traditionalist George Chadwick and the modernist Edgard Varèse. Although Still’s own music was far more accessible in tone, Varèse’s influence is evident in the creative freedom with which he approached composition.

Still’s First Symphony, premiered in 1931 by the Rochester Philharmonic under Howard Hanson, brought widespread acclaim and a flurry of performances by notable orchestras across the US. Its foundations are firmly in the blues tradition, with an original blues melody announced near the beginning of the work and subjected to thematic transformation throughout its four movements. The Symphony’s four movements are headed ‘Longing’, ‘Sorrow’, ‘Humor’ and ‘Aspiration’, and in Still’s own words they ‘demonstrate how the blues, so often considered a lowly expression, could be elevated to the highest musical level.’ Under Gray’s sure-footed direction, the RSNO (particularly the brass and the all-important woodwind) bring out all the bluesy flavour of this essentially neo-Romantic music. The infectious third movement, with its clear anticipation of Gershwin’s ‘I Got Rhythm’ (the two composers were close colleagues), has long been a popular concert favourite on its own. Here, it’s the depth of feeling and tone that Gray and his musicians uncover in the other three movements (not least the noble-toned finale) that makes this performance a winner.

Like Still’s First Symphony, Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony (1934, revised in 1952) had a most distinguished first performance, in this case with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski. It is cast in three movements, with the second (‘Hope in the Night’) combining the functions of slow movement and scherzo. Both Still and Dawson were key figures in the musical response to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s, but where Still’s career embraced jazz and blues, the Alabaman Dawson was influenced most strongly by the tradition of African American spirituals, becoming one of their most notable exponents and arrangers, including through his important educational work at his alma mater, the Tuskegee Institute.

The Negro Folk Symphony constructs a musical narrative that ranges from Africa itself, via the centuries of slavery, towards hope and catharsis. Dawson designated a recurring idea across the work as the ‘missing link’: the break in the human chain when Africans were first subjected to the Transatlantic slave trade. It’s a powerful motif, endowed with further potency by the shimmering colours of Dawson’s sumptuous orchestration and (on this recording) by the spacious acoustics of Scotland’s Studio in Glasgow. The juba-like rhythms (enhanced in the revised version heard here by Dawson’s 1952 travels in West Africa), the yearning, weary tread of the second movement’s slow sections, and the sombre intensity and eventual uplift of the finale are all vividly realised in this rhythmically buoyant performance.

George Walker was one of the leading figures in the generation of African American composers that followed Still, Dawson and Florence Price. He was the first African American graduate of Philadelphia’s renowned Curtis Institute of Music, and a 1957 Fulbright scholarship led to his studies in France with Nadia Boulanger and Robert Casadesus, while his other teachers included Clifford Curzon and Rudolf Serkin. He developed a modernist style that embraced 12-tone serialism, combined with elements of blues, jazz and spirituals. For all his cosmopolitan influences, he never forgot his roots, and following the death of his grandmother, a former slave, he arranged the second movement of his first string quartet as a Lament for string orchestra (1946), later revising and expanding it as the Lyric for Strings (1990).

On this Linn disc it forms the moving centrepiece, performed with poised intensity, and exquisitely phrased. Unlike the palpable flavours of blues and spirituals in the symphonies by Still and Dawson, the stylistic influences in this five-minute work are more elusive. Yet the expressive potency of the Lyric is if anything even more concentrated, making it a perfect companion for the two larger-scale works, and the disc as a whole an absolute must for anyone interested in this crucial seam of American music.

Reviews

The three composers on the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s African American Voices (Linn), conducted by the orchestra’s assistant conductor, South Carolina-born Kellen Gray, are enjoying a vigorous revival. ... [Dawson’s] Negro Folk Symphony (1934) bursts with powerful orchestral gesture and taut rhythms. ... Still brings a blues-jazz sonority to his Symphony No 1 “Afro American” (1931), both exuberant and atmospheric. ... The RSNO honours this repertoire with playing of buoyancy and dexterity. Fiona Maddocks

The Observer 23 October 2022

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Condition	Description
New	Brand new item, only ever sourced from the official UK distributor. Usually seal-wrapped, although a minority of labels do not use seal-wrap.
Used - Mint	Used item in excellent condition. Not usually seal-wrapped.
Used - Good	Used item with some minor signs of wear and tear. Never seal-wrapped.
Used - Acceptable	Used item with obvious scuffs or cosmetic damage to the case or booklet. Never seal-wrapped.

African American Voices

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Europadisc Review

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£14.26

£11.91

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