For those who teach American music of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the availability of recordings and scores has long been a major difficulty. This is particularly true for symphonic works, which are expensive to record. Recordings over the years have been welcome whether the performances are just adequate or exceptional.

The works of John Knowles Paine have always held an interest for Americanists. As one of the earliest generation of Americans to be recognized as a composer of consequence (and the first composer to teach at a major university), Paine is an artist whose career should be explored in music history classes.

With the availability of performances of the complete published works of Paine’s orchestral music by JoAnn Falletta and the Ulster Orchestra, an important lacuna has been filled. Although all but one of the selections, the symphonic poem Poseidon and Amphitrite: An Ocean Fantasy, have been previously available, many of the competing recordings are more than 40 years old and sound dated. Poseidon is an important late work that complements Paine’s earlier symphonic poem, The Tempest. Volume 1 features works dating from the 1870s, when Paine was in his thirties: Symphony No. 1 op. 23 (1872–75), the Overture to Shakespeare’s As You Like It op. 26 (1876) and The Tempest: Symphonic Poem after Shakespeare op. 31 (1877). This last work is a descriptive narrative, lasting about 20 minutes, in six connected sections of various lengths: ‘The Storm’, ‘Calm and Happy Scene before Prospero’s Cell’, ‘Ariel’, ‘Prospero’s Tale’, ‘The Happy Love of Ferdinand and Miranda’ and ‘Episode with Caliban’. These early works clearly display Paine’s compositional and orchestrational talents, though his influences, particularly Beethoven and Mendelssohn in the first symphony, peek through from time to time. One occasionally hears an overly lengthy section, as in the Tempest, which, in this performance, seems to go on too long.

In volume 2, the survey of Paine’s symphonic works continues with works dating from the end of the 1870s and the 1880s. Paine’s second symphony highlights his new approach to harmony. Whereas the earlier works are redolent of mid-century harmonic practices, as Paine entered his forties, he embraced Lisztian chromaticism. The third movement of the symphony, ‘A Romance of Springtime’, is a fine example of Paine’s compositional approach. One hears numerous descending chromatic lines in the melody (bars 16–20, 33–47, etc.) and a generally post-1860s Romantic approach to tempo and key changes. The remaining works on this CD are the Prelude to Oedipus Tyrannus op. 35 (1880–81) in the 1895 revision for large orchestra, and Poseidon and Amphitrite: An Ocean Fantasy op. 44 (1888). These works all exhibit Paine’s mature style and reflect his personal approach to composition. One no longer can speak of influences, though Paine’s musical palette, without doubt, is Germanic in orientation.

While these two CDs present a welcome survey of Paine’s orchestral writing, there are a few omissions. The complete incidental music to Oedipus, for example, consists of the Prelude, six numbers for accompanied male chorus and a 56-bar orchestral Postlude; only the Prelude is published. The Postlude, in particular, would have been a welcome addition to the volume, as it complements the Prelude and brings the work to a close. (A live performance of the entire work by the Hartt Symphony and Chorus conducted by Peter Harvey can be accessed on YouTube.) Another missing work of importance, aside from the first symphony, is Paine’s only other non-programmatic symphonic work: the Duo Concertante for Violin, Cello and Orchestra op. 33 (1877). Although it has never been published, the fair copy score and parts are clear and performable. Paine’s prominence as a composer led also to an unmatched honour – commissions for works to be performed at three of the world’s fairs in the United States: the Centennial Hymn for the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition (1876), the Columbus March and Hymn and Freedom, Our Queen for the Chicago Columbian Exposition (1893) and Hymn of the West for the St Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904). These occasional pieces, the Duo Concertante and the remainder of Oedipus could serve as the basis for a third volume. (Of the works recorded by Faletta, the full scores for all except Oedipus and Poseidon are available through IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library; the second symphony has been published in the Recent Researches in American Music by A-R Editions.)

Under the direction of Falletta, the performances of the Ulster Orchestra (founded in 1966) are solid and well thought-out. The brass, in particular, provides a strong presence. An underlying freedom with rubato and tempo, however, is generally lacking in these readings. For example, comparing Falletta’s reading of the second symphony with Zubin Mehta’s 1986 performance, one hears that he has paid more attention than Falletta to the many rallentandos, accelerandos and ritardandos that Paine indicated. While their tempo choice for the opening Adagio sostenuto (56 bars) is basically the same (=96), Mehta’s heavily inflected performance is 32 seconds longer. In the Adagio third movement, ‘A Romance of Springtime’, Mehta’s performance is 2′ 04″ longer than Falletta’s. While his choice of tempo is marginally slower (=56 to Faletta’s =60), it is his flexible approach to the underlying Romantic basis of the music that offers the listener an opportunity to enter into Paine’s musical artistry. Basic tempi for the faster movements are similar in both performances; Mehta’s fluid rubato approach surges and flows, however, while Falletta’s is generally somewhat more metronomic.

These quibbles aside, over the past decade Naxos has provided Americanists with recordings of works by many otherwise ignored nineteenth-century American composers; these include William Henry Fry, George Templeton Strong, George Whitefield Chadwick, Amy Beach, Charles Martin Loeffler, Arthur Foote and others. These recordings of the published orchestral pieces by Paine continue in that tradition; although most of the pieces were available on earlier recordings, we can all be grateful to Naxos’s enlightened management for providing us with new recordings of these works.