American composer
Nicolas Flagello felt like a fish out of water in the musical atmosphere of his day. Finding his voice in a mildly modernist, mostly post-Romantic idiom around 1950,
Flagello endured marginalization of his music as what
Berthold Goldschmidt once called "the Webern-
Stockhausen mafia" ruled the roost in Western music.
Flagello succumbed to a degenerative disease before the thaw toward more expressive, and less technical, kinds of compositions began to set in. This is an interesting and to some extent tragic story, but should we listen? Naxos American Classics' Nicolas Flagello: Piano Concerto No. 1 attempts to put forth the best face on
Flagello, whose music has received a great deal more attention in the wake of his death than it ever did during his lifetime, albeit on labels much less prominent than Naxos.
The highlight of the disc is the premiere recording of
Flagello's final composition, Concerto Sinfonico (1985) for saxophone quartet and orchestra, not because of any sentiment implied by the lateness of this work within his canon, but due to its variety of ideas, maturity, seriousness, and
Flagello's command of the capability of the saxophones. It is a dark and somewhat bitter work, but not written in as difficult as, say, Samuel Barber's Piano Concerto. The Piano Concerto No. 1, from the beginning of
Flagello's career as a composer and written, in part, to gain a master's degree in music, is a cut above the average student concerto, and has several attractive moments in addition to a few rather bland ones. Dante's Farewell is better, being one of many short scores for orchestral pieces that
Flagello left behind that he was unable to complete in a full score. Soprano Susan Gonzalez does a fine job singing it, and while it doesn't add much to the flavor of the performance, the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra at least stays out of Gonzalez's way.
Flagello's music is interesting, but this Naxos recording is weak, and the orchestral performances do not demonstrate a lot of dedication to the music, dictating more of a sense of getting through it without messing it up too bad. If one is already a fan of
Flagello, then one will not want to miss Nicolas Flagello: Piano Concerto No. 1. Nevertheless, this does not make the best case for the composer, and persons interested in an introduction to his music may wish to investigate some of the other options available.