Walker Sinfonia No. 1; Sinfonia No. 2; Sinonia No. 3; Sinfonia No. 4 ‘Strands’; Sinfonia No. 5 ‘Visions’ National Symphony Orchesta/Gianandrea Noseda NSO NSO0007 (CD/SACD) 65:17 mins
Written between 1984 and 2016 (two years before his death), George Walker’s five Sinfonias are remarkable works: compact survivors of a tradition of tough American modernism that one thought had ended with the likes of Carl Ruggles or Roger Sessions. Terse exchanges, angular phrasings, fierce dissonances with repeated brass bombardments: these are the Sinfonias’ usual ingredients, speckled with slightly jazzy bass lines and typically tangled lyrical flights (for example, the flute solos in Sinfonia No. 2). With the significant exceptions of No. 4 (‘Strands’, haunted by miniature quotations from spirituals) and No. 5 (titled ‘Visions’ and written in anger after the Charleston church massacre of 2015), the materials and goals of the works are predominantly abstract.
Individual EPs have already been issued of most of these committed performances from Noseda and the National Symphony Orchestra (based in Washington, DC) over the last year, but here we get all of Walker’s Sinfonias in one go. This is not, however, always to their advantage. In any context, the more varied textures and excitements of Sinfonias Nos 2 and 3 would stand out from the pack: No. 2 has its striking middle movement scored for flute, four cellos and guitar, while No. 3 ultimately proves that grinding dissonances can still lift the spirit if skilfully arranged with tension maintained. By the same token, Sinfonia No. 5, Walker’s last work and the most socially committed of the series, proves the least musically engaging, lacking the others’ compulsive drive and not helped by its ineffective vocal ingredient – scattered lines from Stephen Foster, spirituals and Virgil, badly declaimed by a quintet of singers whoh are not asked to sing. It’s an unfortunate finale.
Geoff Brown