Antheil: Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5; Decatur at Algiers. Hugh Wolff, Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt. CPO 999 706-2.(Review)

Antheil: Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5; Decatur at Algiers. Hugh Wolff, Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt. CPO 999 706-2.

In 1947 a survey indicated that the four American composers whose works were most often performed were George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, and George Antheil. Remarkable, considering that the first three composers are still immensely popular and the fourth, Antheil, is all but forgotten. Remarkable, too, that he ever became as popular as he did for a short time given the limited number of works he produced and the mediocrity of his output.

Born in 1900 in Trenton, New Jersey, Antheil became a celebrity at an early age as a piano prodigy and later as a self-proclaimed "bad boy" of music with his wildly elaborate stage productions. By the late thirties he had repelled enough of his musical followers that he was forced to work in Hollywood and as a hack writer of pulp fiction. But by 1944 he was back in form with his Fourth Symphony, which was premiered by Leopold Stokowski and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. It was hailed as something worthy of comparison to Shostakovich. If so, it must have been Shostakovich on a really bad day. The Fourth, generally regarded as Antheil's best work, is a mishmash of varying styles, a pastiche of sentimentality, grandiloquence, and blatant ...