GEORGE ANTHEIL : Piano Concerto No. 2 • Serenade No. 2 • Dreams (Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra · Daniel Spalding · Guy Livingston) (2006) APE (image+.cue), lossless

New World Records' George Antheil: Dreams, Piano Concerto No. 2, Serenade No. 2 takes the all-Antheil disc out of the realm of his symphonies and recitals of little, short piano pieces into other kinds of major literature that Antheil also produced. Dreams is one of Antheil's most infectious works, a ballet written for George Balanchine that co-mingles waltzes, marches, pop tunes, and even Schumann's The Happy Farmer in a lightly applied and certainly "dreamlike" tapestry as diaphanous as the music it was designed to replace, namely Darius Milhaud's Les Songes. One wonders why Balanchine would want to substitute for music that is as lovely as Les Songes, but there was a concern among émigré artists in the 1930s that their productions might be perceived as "too European" for American tastes. In any event, Antheil did Balanchine proud with Dreams, and it is equally mysterious that they did not work together again.

Just as light and precious is Antheil's Piano Concerto No. 2, though dating from his "futurist" period in the 1920s, is likewise light and colorful, although the harmonic palette in use is more daring. Although largely condemned as "pseudo-Stravinsky" when it was first heard, it is clear that the Piano Concerto No. 2 is a continuation of the ideas Antheil first pursued in Piano Concerto No. 1, except that it doesn't contain nearly as many violent contrasts. Antheil's score for Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman helped set the tone for the scoring of movie westerns, and some of that hickory-smoked flavor carries over into his American vernacular onSerenade No. 2, rubbing shoulders with cityscapes, skyscrapers, and lonely walks through dark, rainy alleyways. All three pieces dispense with familiar development schemes and even psychological form in favor of a sort of loose, stream-of-consciousness manner of folding one idea into another, or in making abrupt transitions like "jump cuts" in a movie.

Pianist Guy Livingston, who has done much on Antheil's behalf, is the featured soloist in the concerto, and the whole is performed by the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra under Daniel Spalding. The recording, made at the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, is good but a little distant, and at times the listener might wish to hear pianist David Hasbrig in Dreams a little better. None of these pieces had been recorded before when this disc was planned, and in the meantime, CPO managed to rush out an Antheil Piano Concerto No. 2 of its own a little ahead of this one. Given a choice between the two, any true Antheilian would want the one with Livingston, and indeed, it is worth the slight wait. Moreover, this is a nicely chosen combination of works that demonstrate that in his youth, Antheil viewed Europe through American eyes, but after his return in maturity, he was seeing America from the perspective of a European sensibility. Uncle Dave Lewis
George Antheil (1900-1959)
1-9.    Dreams    (28:18)
10-12.    Piano Concerto No. 2    (21:40)
13-15.    Serenade No. 2    (22:11)
Credits :
Conductor – Daniel Spalding
Orchestra – Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra
Piano – Guy Livingston

GEORGE ANTHEIL : Bad Boy's Piano Music (Benedikt Koehlen) (1995) APE (image+.cue), lossless

GEORGE ANTHEIL (1900-1959)
    
1    Fireworks (1919)    1:04
2    Profane Waltzes (1919) - I. Tempo Di Valse (1919)    1:09
3    Profane Waltzes (1919) - II. Over Sentimental - Exaggerated    2:25
4    The Golden Bird, After Brancusi (1921)    4:43
5    Second Sonata "The Airplane" (1921) - Lent - First Movement    5:20
6    Second Sonata "The Airplane" (1921) - Andante Moderato    2:45
7    Jazz Sonata (Sonata No. 4) (1922)    1:33
8    Mechanisms (1923)    12:50
9    Third Sonata "Death Of Machines" (1923)    1:50
10    (Little) Shimmy (1923)    1:33
11    Sonata Sauvage (1923) - Niggers. Allegro Vivo - Joyeuse Marcato, A La Nègre    2:45
12    Sonata Sauvage (1923) - Snakes. (Lento) - Prestissimo - Lento    5:07
13    Sonata Sauvage (1923) - Moderato-Xylophonic. Prestissimo    0:49
14    Sonata V (1922-23)    2:55
15    Sonatina Für Radio (1929)    3:55
16    Sonatina 1932    4:17

Piano – Benedikt Koehlen

GEORGE ANTHEIL : The Lost Sonatas (Guy Livingston) (2003) APE (image+.cue), lossless

Pianist Guy Livingston has brought his considerable talents to bear on the "bad boy of music" in the Wergo disc George Antheil: The Lost Sonatas. Livingston attempts to reconcile George Antheil's late "populist" music with the clangorous early piano compositions that have become Antheil's calling card to posterity. In the process Livingston uncovers a host of masterworks from both periods, proving that in his piano music, Antheil was neither a publicity hound, a "fake" futurist, nor a slavish imitator of mid-century trends hoping to graze from the same gravy train as Copland.
In a sense, of the three late piano sonatas heard here, Sonata No. 4 has never been "lost" so much as terribly neglected; it was duly published by Weintraub back in 1951 and has been recorded a few times. However, the others, save Sonata Sauvage, have not been played in five or more decades. The Piano Sonata No. 5, which opens the disc, is a real gem, particularly the concluding Allegro, which seems to bring boogie-woogie stylings into the orbit of Prokofiev. The melting lyricism of the Adagio movement of the Sonata No. 3 may surprise some listeners, but it is not so astonishing if you understand the milieu of the short second movement of Antheil's "Airplane" Sonata.
George Antheil: The Lost Sonatas' great strength is not so much in that it introduces so many works never heard before as it shows us how much Antheil's later music is like his earlier music. Hopefully this will bury for all time the criticism of "stylistic inconsistency" that has dogged Antheil in posterity and has contributed to his neglect. Wergo's recording is perfect, picking up the piano's full range, from intimacy in the Sonata No. 3 to the blistering loudness of the Sonata Sauvage, reproducing it all faithfully. The task of playing Antheil's piano music well is in itself quite a feat. It requires the stamina and agility of a boxer tempered with the sensitivity of a poet and a mathematician's sense of logic. Livingston is the champion on all counts, and this is the best compact disc of George Antheil's piano music ever.  by Uncle Dave Lewis 

GEORGE ANTHEIL : The String Quartets (Mondriaam String Quartet) (1990) APE (image+.cue), lossless

GEORGE ANTHEIL (1900-1959)

String Quartet No. 1 (String Quartet In One Movement)    
String Quartet No. 2 "For Sylvia Beach, With Love"    
String Quartet No. 3    

Ensemble – The Mondriaan String Quartet

GEORGE ANTHEIL : Fighting the Waves : Music of George Antheil (Ensemble Modern, HK Gruber) (1996) APE (image+.cue), lossless

GEORGE ANTHEIL (1900-1959)
    
Printemps I 1:12
Violin – Jagdish Mistry
Ballet Mécanique    14:22
Fighting The Waves 14:28
Tenor Vocals – Martyn Hill
A Jazz Symphony    6:32
Lithuanian Night    (3:42)
Jazz Sonata    1:58
Concerto For Chamber Orchestra    14:24
Violin Sonata No. 1 (20:56)
Piano – Hermann Kretzschmar
Violin – Jagdish Mistry
Printemps II 1:06
Violin – Jagdish Mistry

Orchestra, Chorus – Ensemble Modern
Conductor – HK Gruber

GEORGE ANTHEIL : Ballet Mécanique (Daniel Spalding) (2001) APE (image+.cue), lossless

The Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, conducted by founder Daniel Spalding, give George Antheil's once notorious Ballet mécanique an exciting and colorful performance for Naxos here. While this work has lost much of its ability to shock, it is nevertheless an invigorating composition, sounding fresh and impertinent even today. With considerable energy and accuracy, the players present the work's audacious effects with appropriate brusqueness and metallic incisiveness, sparing nothing at the music's explosive end. Using the revised version from 1953, the ensemble here consists of four pianos, two xylophones, glockenspiel, various standard percussion, two electric bells, and the drones of two airplane propellers of different sizes. Antheil's clarified orchestration heightens the clever play of interlocking patterns and the even dispersal of the percussion's sharp timbres. In the course of the piece's rambunctious activity, the overwhelming influence of Stravinsky becomes apparent. The pounding ostinati, dynamic rhythms, cellular melodic material, parallel chord progressions -- even what seem to be a few direct quotations from the Rite of Spring and Petrushka -- all admit the impact the older composer had on Antheil's music. The all-digital sound of this recording is bright and crisp, and the often overlapping sonorities of the cymbals, triangle, and bells are distinctly separated. by Blair Sanderson  
More About this Recording

GEORGE ANTHEIL (1900-1959)

Ballet Mecanique
Serenade for String Orchestra, No. 1
Symphony for Five Instruments (Second Version)
Concerto for Chamber Orchestra

Conductor – Daniel Spalding
Orchestra – Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra

GEORGE ANTHEIL : Symphonies 1 & 6 (Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt, Hugh Wolff) (2000) APE (image+.cue), lossless

In its American Classics series Naxos has a cycle of Antheil Symphonies and other works ongoing, with the young conductor Theodor Kuchar leading the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. The Fourth and Sixth Symphonies appear on the first issue in that cycle, along with a short work called McKonkey's Ferry, and in all those works the voice of Shostakovich can be heard. Here, in the First, from 1923 when the composer was twenty-three, no such influence can be discerned, and neither does the work in any substantial way sound immature. Already Antheil had developed a sure sense of orchestration, if not of style. This work, in fact, sounds as though it contains a variety of influences, from the music of Les Six (he was living in France at the time he wrote this symphony) to that of Stravinsky.

The work is interesting, to be sure, but for all its seeming maturity does not rise to the level of his later symphonies. At least its colors and changing moods point the way to his career as a successful film composer in Hollywood a couple of decades later.

The Sixth (1947-48) is the more substantial work here and not only shows the influence of Shostakovich but of Prokofiev as well, especially in the second movement. The excellent notes, by Eckhardt van den Hoogen, point out these musical ties. This is a powerful work that seethes with tension throughout, even in the haunting Larghetto central panel. The finale is pure energy and color. The symphony sounds little like the American music from the time, but instead divulges Antheil's rather cosmopolitan nature. He was not afraid to associate his style with that of other composers, and was apparently content to go against the grain in a variety of ways.

Archipelago is a rumba that was later reworked into the composer's Second Symphony as its third movement. It's clever and colorful, and makes a decent filler, not least because it showcases the Gershwinian side of Antheil.

The performances here are excellent and young Hugh Wolff demonstrates a firm grasp on Antheil's music. Does he offer a better Sixth than Kuchar on Naxos? That's the burning question, especially amid the irony that Naxos now distributes cpo discs. Both conductors share overall timings that are close (26:04 for Kuchar and 25:48 for Wolff), but their individual movements vary considerably. I would say Wolff is more fluent and smoother, but that Kuchar, rawer and more intense, is in the end the better choice. Besides, his couplings are far better.

Still, for those interested in Antheil, this CD is well worth knowing. The performances by the Frankfurt players are excellent and Wolff's readings are convincing. The sound is vivid and, as suggested above, the copious notes are most informative. by Robert Cummings  

GEORGE ANTHEIL (1900-1959)

Symphony No 1 »Zingareska« (1923)    (30:57)
Symphony No 6 »After Delacroix« (1947-48)    (25:48)

Conductor – Hugh Wolff
Orchestra – Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt

GEORGE ANTHEIL : Symphony No 3 »American« (Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt, Hugh Wolff) (2004) APE (image+.cue), lossless

Here Hugh Wolff leads the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra in the third volume of a series surveying the orchestral music of George Antheil. It's hard to imagine how Wolff and his crew are going to be able to top this one, as it brings together some of the cream of this repertoire in flawless, sharply etched performances that are big-boned and relentlessly exciting. Antheil's Symphony No. 3 "American" is a great American symphony, easily qualified to take its place of honor alongside the "Third" symphonies of his contemporaries Roy Harris and Aaron Copland. By the end of the 1940s Antheil was the third most frequently performed American composer in concert halls after Copland and Samuel Barber, but this exalted reputation did not survive his early death in 1959. In listening to the "American" Symphony one wonders why not, as it has all of the necessary hallmarks; big city complexity, open prairie landscapes, memorable tunes, and nervous, incessant rhythms derived from jazz. Everyone who loves the "American vernacular" style of the 1940s should hear this work. Antheil's Third was premiered under conductor Hans Kindler in 1945, but this CPO disc represents its first appearance on any kind of issued recording.

Likewise making their bow are two equally solid and enjoyable "vernacular" works, Antheil's delightful Tom Sawyer Overture and the rousing Hot-Time Dance. Both McKonkey's Ferry Overture and Capital of the World have been recorded several times, but they have never sounded better as they do here.

The only complaint here is about the notes by Eckhardt van den Hoogen. They are highly informative, but gossipy, and deal in great detail with aspects of Antheil's life that are not relevant to the music at hand. Perhaps van den Hoogen is afraid CPO will not be taking the series beyond this volume, and is trying to get in all the material he can, but most of it is more appropriate for a full-length biography of the composer and not a set of liner notes. Nonetheless, everything else about this CD is just simply great, and it should be your first choice for the orchestral music of George Antheil. by Uncle Dave Lewis  

GEORGE ANTHEIL (1900-1959)

Symphony No 3 »American« (1936-39/rev. 1946)    (25:02)
Tom Sawyer »California Overture« (1949)    5:25
Hot-Time Dance (1948)    4:24
McKonkey's Ferry Overture (1948)    9:03
Capital Of The World - Suite In Three Movements (1953)    (17:08)

Conductor – Hugh Wolff
Orchestra – Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt

GEORGE ANTHEIL : Symphonies 4 & 5 (Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt, Hugh Wolff) (2000) APE (image+.cue), lossless

GEORGE ANTHEIL (1900-1959)

Symphony No 4 »1942« (1942-43)    (33:26)
Symphony No 5 »Joyous« (1947-48)    (22:10)

Conductor – Hugh Wolff
Orchestra – Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt

GEORGE ANTHEIL : A Jazz Symphony • Piano Concerto No. 1 • Capital of the World Suite • Archipelago Rhumba (Dupree, Steffens) (2017) FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

GEORGE ANTHEIL (1900-1959)
A Jazz Symphony, For 3 Pianos And Orchestra (1925, Original Version / For Paul Whiteman) 12:28
Piano [III] – Uram Kim
Piano [II] – Adrian Brendle
Piano [I] – Frank Dupree
Concerto For Piano And Orchestra No.1 (1922) 21:40
Piano – Frank Dupree
Capital Of The World, Orchestral Suite (1953)    (17:35)
Archipelago «Rhumba» (1935)    5:42

Conductor – Karl-Heinz Steffens
Orchestra – Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz