Weekly Lebrecht | The Buffalo Philharmonic releases a beautiful tribute album to Lukas Foss

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French (French)

Lukas Foss was a classmate of Leonard Bernstein at the Curtis Institute and a lifelong friend, but never equal, to him. While Bernstein rose to national glory in his 1944 Annus Mirabilis, Foss quietly composed his first symphony in the bucolic tranquility of the MacDowell Colony. His teacher at Curtis, Fritz Reiner, premiered the symphony in Pittsburgh a year later, but to no greater success. Foss’s Americana style seemed both old-fashioned and derivative. Aaron Copland did this sort of thing much better, and a decade earlier. Foss also composed three ballets that year, but he lacked Bernstein’s On the Town recklessness and his fierce gift for being in the right place at the right time. The son of a Berlin philosopher who fled Hitler’s regime, Lukas Foss’s music seems a little too measured for its own good.

Foss served as Buffalo’s music director from 1963 to 1970, followed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the Milwaukee Symphony, all fine orchestras, if not world beaters. This beautiful Buffalo Philharmonic tribute album is conducted by JoAnn Falletta. She gives a spirited account of her symphony and intense readings of an Ode to the Victims of War and Three American Pieces. They all fit well in the ear. A Renaissance concerto for flute and orchestra, bridging Baroque and nuclear mentalities, fails to capture the imagination. The music is beautifully done. You keep wishing there was more courage. Foss was no shrinking violet in his fiery relationship with Bernstein. These scores are relatively lukewarm for Foss.

This page is also available in / This page is also available in:
French (French)