Lesser-Known U.S. Works Take Center Stage on Disc

San Diego conductor David Amos’ recently released recording with the City of London Sinfonia pays tribute to American music, with a San Diego accent.

The most laudable contribution of the “Modern Masters II” compact disc is San Diego State University composer David Ward-Steinman’s Concerto No. 2 for Chamber Orchestra. A jaunty, extroverted essay from the composer’s early years at the school, the concerto was premiered in 1963 by the Sherwood Hall Orchestra of La Jolla. Sadly, in the ensuing years, the work has rarely been programmed by local ensembles, but Amos (best know as the music director of the Jewish Community Center Orchestra) has put together a vigorous and well-shaped performance that may correct that oversight.

Equally impressive on the new disc is Karen Elaine’s solo in Norman Dello Joio’s “Lyric Fantasies for Viola and Strings.” Elaine’s incisive playing, colorful sonority and polished technique gives this showpiece with substance its due. Elaine, a San Diego native who graduated from Philadelphia’s Curtiss Institute of Music, is an adjunct faculty member at SDSU.

Other composers on five-piece “Modern Masters II” include the late Henry Cowell and Paul Creston. (San Diego cannot claim Creston as one of its own, but the late Italian-American composer spent his retirement years in Rancho Bernardo.) These once-lauded composers are part of a lost generation of American musicians whose audience-friendly, neoclassical style held sway in the decades after World War II. Their works were unceremoniously pushed off the concert stage in the mid-1960s, when academic composers felt constrained to follow either the European serialists (12-tone composers and their offspring) or the trendy experimentalists whose iconoclastic guru was John Cage.

Not all of the disc’s neoclassical choices, however, make compelling listening.

Creston’s Partita for Flute, Violin and String Orchestra dulls the ear with a surfeit of facile formula writing. But pieces such as Ward-Steinman’s Chamber Orchestra Concerto easily overshadow the trendy minimalist orchestral commissions of the past decade.

Amos’ modest “Modern Masters” series is symptomatic of the revival of interest in traditional 20th-Century American orchestral music. His “Modern Masters III,” a disc devoted to more Dello Joio and two works by Alan Hovhaness, will be released in June. On “Modern Masters I,” Amos offered more familiar U.S. composers, such as Miklos Rozsa and Gian Carlo Menotti.

Amos’ project, which is a personal crusade to champion American composers, reflects a growing interest in this music. The Seattle Symphony, under music director Gerard Schwarz, has been recording in systematic fashion the large symphonies of Howard Hanson, Walter Piston and William Schuman. Amos’ project is a delectable pendant to Seattle’s well-publicized and much-awarded recordings.

Mainly Mozart snug at Kingston. Despite another bout with bankruptcy, the downtown Kingston Hotel will continue to house the performers in David Atherton’s annual Mainly Mozart Festival. Speaking for Alliance Hospitality, the Kingston’s newly installed management, general manager Dan Ponder affirmed the hotel’s support for Mainly Mozart as well as the Bowery Theatre, which presents plays at the hotel. Rather than a drain on the hotel’s limited resources, Ponder sees the festival and theater in a rosier light.

“We think these arts organizations are tremendous assets,” Ponder said. “We intend to attract arts patrons from outlying areas to stay overnight at the hotel when they come in to attend concerts and theater downtown.”

For the first time, Mainly Mozart (May 30 to June 9) will present all of its concerts indoors in the downtown Spreckels Theatre.

Even more Mozart. The Athenaeum, La Jolla’s music and arts library, is joining the Mozart bicentennial bandwagon with its own Midsummer Mozart festival July 28 to Aug. 3. In cooperation with West Coast Lyric Opera, the Athenaeum will play host to the Texas-based Thouvenel String Quartet and assorted friends in three evening concerts in the library’s music room.

The July 28 opening program will feature string quartets from each of Mozart’s creative periods. On July 31, soprano Sylvia Wen and pianist Anne Young will join the Thouvenel with a selection of the composer’s art songs and concert arias. The final concert, Aug. 3, will feature the G Minor Viola Quintet, K. 516, with Thouvenel and violist Susan Bates. Subscription information is available from Athenaeum director Dan Atkinson (454-5872).

Music marathon. Students and teachers of the Community Music School at San Diego State University will stage a music marathon from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. May 4 at the Balboa Park Organ Pavilion.

The local conservatory teaches more than 200 students from age 3 to senior citizens. Because of recent budget cuts at SDSU, the music school needs to raise funds for basic operating expenses and its scholarship program. Friends and relatives will sponsor the marathon performers, but the public is invited to hear the music for free.

School director Marsha Wolfersberger will coordinate the event. Among the instrumental performers will be pianist Karen Follingstad of the school’s music department.