In the liner notes of Stradivarius' From the New World, Vol. 1, painter Paul Klee is cited as having said he wished he could return to being a newborn baby once more so that he could forget about Europe. "Forgetting about Europe" seems to be the theme of From the New World, Vol. 1, which at first glance appears to be a compilation, but is a condensation of recordings made at three annual festivals held at Macerata, Italy, by the Rassegna di Nuova Musica di Macerata. These events were all exclusively devoted to the work of American composers, although the performers are mostly Italian. Although by nature of what it is, this cannot help but be a mixed bag, From the New World, Vol. 1, does provide a tantalizing glimpse of what American music means to Europeans, with its examples of wide-ranging experimentalism and the unstated, but palpable notions of "freedom."
The recordings are all live from the festival and the sound is not great overall, being a tad quiet and distant, although thankfully there is no applause. On the plus side, there is a terrific performance of
Henry Cowell's The Banshee by pianist Fausto Bongelli, which at 4:42 is probably the longest interpretation ever released on a recording -- it is truly spooky and very well extrapolated from the score. Another outstanding feature -- and this will likely be the item that proves most appealing to American consumers of this disc -- is
Terry Riley performing his own previously unrecorded piece Beat Sutra #7, a jazzy improvisation designed to fall underneath a reading by Beat poet Michael McClure. The Druckman,
Feldman, and Sessions works are heard in decent performances that are somewhat compromised by the distant sound. Trombonist
Mike Svoboda arranges three
Charles Ives songs for trombone and band, but these fail to get off the ground as the Italian band sounds terribly lax and under-rehearsed, and it appears that whatever source
Svoboda used for Charlie Rutlage for a musical text was faulty. However, this is not the worst idea on From the New World, Vol. 1 -- that distinctly belongs to Peter Söderberg and
Francesco Dillon's arrangement of
John Cage's Dream for archlute and cello. On paper it sounds like an inspired concept, but (a) the piece is transposed and (b) the cello "sustains" pitches while the archlute plays
Cage's melody line, a plan that does not work and is not what
Cage had in mind at all.
Nonetheless, From the New World, Vol. 1, is informative in a way, and does bring a first-rate Banshee, so to condemn it out of hand wouldn't be fair. But that and the
Riley combined mean that only 18 minutes of this hour-long disc is wholly satisfactory, a ratio that might not prove enough for many consumers.