Scott Duncan, Three Waltzes
Schmaltzy, shallow, diatonic in the most simplistic and cliched style, Getty's waltzes apparently were intended as some feeble homage to the Viennese waltz. They belong more in the realm of easy-listening music than to works considered fit for a serious symphonic program.
Joshua Kosman, Annabel Lee
Gordon Getty's aptly gloomy choral setting of Poe's mournful poem of lost love.
Stephanie von Buchau, Young America
Gordon Getty does great things for music, mostly financial, but composing is not one of them. His music plods rhythmically, drearily in the case of Poe's "Annabel Lee"; not even the excitements of Shakespeare (Henry IV's death from "Plump Jack") can kick him out of a too-regular jogging pace.
Joshua Kosman, Young America & Annabel Lee
The program began with two choral works by San Francisco's own Gordon Getty, both of them recorded live for release on the PentaTone Classics label. "Annabel Lee," a short, chiaroscuro-laden setting of Poe's poem of young love, has been done here before.
A newer and more ambitious offering was "Young America," a six-part song cycle written in 2001 to mostly original verse. This proved to be a sort of neo-Carl Sandburg deal, launched by exhortations to admire the breadth and scope of the nation ("Hark the Homeland") and continuing with some intimate and even sentimental offerings.
Getty's musical language is resolutely staid, which saps the score of some of the Ivesian energy it could use. But there is plenty of lovely writing, particularly in an original folk-song ("Heather Mary") whose blend of English and American melodic strains deftly straddles the Atlantic.
Scott Foglesong, Young America
A fascinating and extremely expressive work written by a man who is not only one of the City's most generous musical patrons, but a fine composer in his own right.