William Schuman is one of those composers you want to like, but he doesn’t always make it easy. Both the tuneful Orchestral Song and the breezy, ebullient Circus Overture have plenty of charm and sparkle, respectively; and the Fourth Symphony, in three cogent and expressive movements, builds naturally on the achievement of the popular Third. The Ninth Symphony, though, is a dud. Supposedly inspired by an Italian site of Nazi war atrocities, the piece is both ugly and pedantic, as Schuman increasingly became as his career progressed. Monochrome string writing predominates: the winds noodle aimlessly, with brass and percussion making noisy exclamations at climaxes. The lapidary treatment of texture is boringly predicable, the relentless lack of thematic appeal ultimately irritating.
As his style veered toward the atonal, Schuman did absolutely nothing to take this into account in terms of adjusting his basic compositional habits. Consequently, much of his late music sounds gratuitously unmotivated, with a huge gap between evident expressive intent and the means employed. These performances are committed and well recorded, but you can get the Fourth Symphony done just as well–with more successful couplings (Credendum and the Piano Concerto) and even better sonics–from the Albany Symphony on its eponymous label. I wish I could be more enthusiastic about this release. Atonal music is like any other kind: there’s good and bad. Schuman’s is bad.
