Two faces of America

★★★/★★★★

The London Symphony Orchestra has long considered itself half-American. With Andre Previn and Michael Tilson Thomas as principal conductors and Leonard Bernstein dropping by on a regular basis, the LSO changed accent to mid-Atlantic and turned on the Broadway style at the drop of a hat. Still does, apparently.

Under Antonio Pappano who, though born in London, was raised in the US, the LSO give a satisfying, idiomatic performance of Aaron Copland’s third symphony. Rippling with mid-western tunes and end-of-war optimism, it once seemed like a gateway to the Great American Symphony of the future. Nowadays, post-minimalism, nobody looks for national revelation and Copland’s third just sounds naïve, midway between anthropology and jingoism. Worst is the finale which is wound around Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, an anachronism from the moment it was written. The symphony makes a good noise, though, and it’s timely for the US 250th celebrations.  The LSO play as if they believe in it.

George Walker’s troubled fifth symphony reflects a very different America — the 2015 racist shooting of nine worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Walker, in his 90s, planned to compose the symphony as accompaniment to filmed narration of the mass massacre. He decided wisely against it. The music, a 15-minute single movement, condenses anger and despair in a tight, capsule, hard to swallow. There are flutters of woodwind relief, but the general mood is dark, and Pappano’s LSO play it darker still. This is America in the raw, take it or look away. Walker’s fifth offers a real-time counterpoint to Copland’s roseate idealism, and all the more welcome for that.