Classical Symphony's "Americans in Paris'

The centerpiece of the Classical Symphony's latest outing was a major 20th-Century work that's been receiving extra playing time recently. The Philadelphia Orchestra presented Darius Milhaud's La Création du Monde just a few days before this month's Classical Symphony concert, and Orchestra 2001 performed it last April.

Milhaud's Creation of 1923 was one of the first pieces to bring jazz into the classical tradition. Like Haydn's 18th-Century work of the same name, it uses the creation theme as a vehicle to celebrate life. Genesis may be a fable about original sin, but Milhaud, like Haydn, takes a happier view of the subject, and gives us a vision that suggests the world was created by a high-stepping host who concocted the biggest fish fry he could put together.

One of his work's best features is a saxophone aria that sings over most of the sections. The climactic event— the creation of man and woman— is preceded by a cakewalk.

One-time wonders

The Classical Symphony's music director, Karl Middleman, titled the program "Americans in Paris" and scheduled compositions that were influenced by jazz and the city that became a legendary stomping ground for artists and writers in the years after World War I.

In his onstage remarks, Middleman noted that the musicians were playing several pieces they had never played before— and might never play again. The first two entries— Igor Stravinsky's 1916 Ragtime and George Antheil's 1932 Octet for Winds— could have used more of the polish the Classical Symphony usually applies to its work. The slower, quieter sections sometimes sounded tentative.

Ragtime is a work in which everybody goes off in different directions and something new happens every few minutes. The piece that followed Milhaud's Création, Walter Piston's 1945 Divertimento for Nine Instruments, combined jazz rhythms with Baroque counterpoint and Baroque zest. It was the best executed of the three less-familiar scores.

Gershwin in church

The finale was one of the most popular pieces by an American composer—Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, with Curtis Institute's Hugh Sung as soloist. In addition to Sung's astute work at the keyboard, the performance featured a triumphal brass section sparked by Davin Kelly at lead trumpet and some great riffs from Robert Gale's trombone.

The largish orchestra crowded into the front of the church sounded overly percussive in First Unitarian's acoustics, but it delivered the kind of loose, exciting 20 minutes that Gershwin must have visualized when he based his rhapsody on a loose, lively American musical innovation.