AMERICANIST | MUSIC WEB REVIEW

REVIEW: The Americanist

Rob Challinor

Elizabeth Newkirk talks about a myth of America, neither historical nor fictional as she writes. It is the story of the American Dream, the story of innovation, of creativity and of the vast breadth of its landscape and the variety of its peoples, both native and immigrant. Her long and passionately detailed essay in the booklet is insightful, informative, philosophical and I will readily admit, to a simple lad like me, occasionally confusing but for many it is the music that counts. On that score I would consider this an album about more than America. True, Ravel was indeed inspired by American idioms in works like his Piano Concerto in G and the Violin Sonata but the inspiration for La Valse comes from an easterly direction, namely Vienna; it nods to the Vienna of the waltz kings but also ultimately to the loss and grief of a city that was past its golden age and that had faced the horrors of a world war. Gershwin's An American in Paris brings two countries and personalities together in a riotous profusion of colour and experience while Afro-American composer William Grant Still strides across two continents, forging memory and the myth, a lost past with the sounds of a new home and future. I imagine it could be said that whilst the music here is of three continents that in itself speaks of America as a melting pot of cultures.