SOUNDS OF AMERICA
Worthington (b1949), though her works – including some featured here – appear on a dozen more. Her music is tricky to pin down stylistically, a consequence of her innately intuitive approach to composition and to her being self-taught. (Contrary to Navona’s publicity, being an autodidact as a composer is not at all unique: Havergal Brian, Schoenberg, Steve Elcock, Sorabji and Takemitsu, to pluck a few names at random, were all, in varying degrees, selftaught.) In broad terms, her music is tonally based, sometimes a touch freely so, strong on atmosphere and sonorities, well laid out for the instruments. Her style is not especially personal, with resonances (quite accidental, I suspect) of other composers, whether early Aulis Sallinen in the edgier sections of Full Circle (2018) or even Vaughan Williams in Shadows of the Wind (2019) and the string-orchestral Within Deep Currents (2020).
The programme is nicely balanced between orchestral and chamber works, all composed during the past 11 years. The most immediately impressive of the smaller-scale pieces are two of the earliest, the violin duo Night Stream (2011) – cleanly played by Antonín Hradil and Jakab Látal – and Resolves for solo cello (2016), performed here in a private studio recording by the wonderfully named Carmine Miranda. Balancing on the Edge of Shadows (2020) was commissioned by violinist Audrey Wright for her to play with her accompanist, Yundu Wang, who premiered it on Navona’s ‘Things in Pairs’ album, repeated here with rather clattery piano tone.
It will be noted that Worthington’s titles are all descriptive, as the works are variants of tone poems and fantasias. The only generic musical title – rhapsody – occurs as the subtitle of In Passages, a fine mini-violin concerto nicely given by Mojca Ramu≈c´ak with the Croatian Chamber Orchestra. The Janá∂ek and Moravian Philharmonic orchestras perform the remaining orchestral works very convincingly. Good sound. Guy Rickards
Our monthly guide to North American venues Bass Performance Hall, Fort Worth
Year opened 1998 Architect David M Schwarz/Architectural Services, Inc Capacity 2042
If Dallas likes to think of itself as a thoroughly modern big city, Fort Worth, 30 miles west, enjoys its nostalgia. Stockyards responsible for the ‘Cowtown’ nickname haven’t processed cattle since the 1950s, but they’re now a tourist destination. Downtown, most new buildings from the 1980s on have been designed to look like old buildings, either turn-of-the-20th-century or art deco. Major downtown development has been spearheaded by the Bass family, oil-inheritance billionaires, big-time investors and Fort Worth benefactors. Most of these new-old buildings are the work of David M Schwarz Architects, whose retro approach is also evident in the Nancy Lee and Perry R Bass Performance Hall and adjacent Maddox-Muse Center. Opened in 1998, Bass Hall presents a quasi-Viennese Secession facade in creamy limestone, with two enormous trumpeting angels by sculptor Márton Váró. The interior looks a bit like a late 19th-century music hall, basically a high-ceilinged shoebox narrowing slightly towards the stage. Seating for 2042 rises from orchestra level and surrounding parterre to a box tier, mezzanine and lower and upper balconies. Overhead, a shallow double dome was decorated by local artists Stuart and Scott Gentling, the outer section painted with giant feathers, the inner dome with a cloud-framed sky view.
The orchestra shell used for symphonic performances and the quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition has more of an art deco look, with contrasting wood panels and an overhead succession of scooped acoustical reflectors finished in gold leaf. But in this multipurpose hall the shell can be retracted and full theatrical curtains, flies and lighting deployed. A stage extension can be lowered to form a full orchestra pit.
In addition to the Cliburn Competition, Bass Hall is home to the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Texas Ballet Theater and – currently unsure of its direction – Fort Worth Opera. Performing Arts Fort Worth, the not-for-profit organisation that owns and manages the hall, presents its own series of Broadway shows, pop and country music and comedy acts.
Thanks to acoustical design by Jaffe Holden, Bass Hall is sonically adjustable for these different uses – and effectively so. For classical music, the sound is admirably clear but also fullbodied, with a pleasant ‘ring’. Remote-controlled acoustical curtains can be drawn over side walls for a drier sound for amplified music or spoken word. Whatever one thinks about the mix of architectural styles and gestures, the building is sophisticated in its use of a single city block. Lobby areas are staggered on multiple levels so that patrons never feel cramped. With extensive experience in designing sports facilities, the Schwarz firm knows how to manage crowds.
Across Calhoun Street, the Maddox-Muse Center contains two performance-or-party spaces, each seating up to 300, and offices for Performing Arts Fort Worth and the Fort Worth Symphony. Adding to an early 20th-century medical college building, facades here mix art deco elements with an echo of the big half-moon window of Louis Sullivan’s 1908 National Farmers’ Bank in Owatonna, Minnesota. Scott Cantrell gramophone.co.uk
GRAMOPHONE JUNE 2022 V
