Paul Creston (who was born Giuseppe Guttoveggio in New York City in 1906) was one of the youngest of the fine "American Symphonists" who largely came to fame in the 1930s. This First Symphony was written in 1940 and premiered in Brooklyn, New York, with Fritz Mahler conducting the NYA Symphony Orchestra (an amateur group), on February 22, 1941. It was not until Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra played it at home and in New York in 1943 that it was really noticed. The New York Music Critics Circle voted it the most important new symphonic work of the 1942-1943 season. In 1952, a Paris International Competition awarded it a First Prize.

By then, of course, the new international interest in atonal serial (highly organized music based on Schoenberg and Webern's twelve-tone system) was beginning to take over. Creston went on to write several other symphonies, but they were increasingly seen as yesterday's style and they were taken less seriously then his earliest works in this form.

The symphony opens (marked "With Majesty") with a brisk subject played against running scale figures in the strings. There is something about the opening gesture and its harmonies that suggest that Creston is here influenced by the music of Paul Hindemith. It is not long, however, that a stronger emphasis on an attractive melody and bouncy, infectious rhythms were going to mark Creston's true voice. It seems to this listener that the brief flirtation with Hindemith is intended to banish the sounds of Romantic orchestral style from Creston's music.

As spontaneous as the music sounds, the opening movement is well planned from an academic point of view. It is in a variant of the sonata-allegro form, with no fewer than three important motives introduced within the first six measures. These are briefly expanded upon to make up the first theme group. The second theme is a very nice lyrical theme. All these elements are treated in an imaginative development. During it, the rhythmic elements of the first theme seem to permeate the rhythmic theme. By the time the recapitulation arrives, the three-group rhythmic theme has fused itself into a fully lyrical melody, and the second subject tune has taken on the original character of the rhythmic theme. One can criticize the composer for being too eager to display all the contrapuntal technique he had learned, mostly through his own self-directed studies.

The scherzo movement (With Humor) is wholly in Creston's distinctive voice. It is a dance-like piece, a description that can be attached to a myriad of Creston's compositions and individual movements. But it is not an actual dance; it has too many irregular measures. The movement becomes a typical Creston song-and-dance movement when the contrasting trio section is a lush, cinematic theme.

The third movement, "With Serenity," is a lovely and pastoral piece with a rich melody mostly in a texture of woodwind solos against a wash of lushly-scored string chords. Throughout the piece the orchestra is of the utmost clarity and variety of sound, without any suggestion that Creston uses color for its own sake.

The finale, With Gaiety, emphasizes tricky syncopated rhythms and perky themes. They keep coming back in different textures, with brass chord passages for contrast. At the end the brass theme, its note values double so it takes on a stately quality, played against the strings' and woodwinds' whirling figures based on the movement's opening theme. What the average listener notices is the sense of fun in this 23-minute symphony rather than the lessons the Creston absorbed from his text-books.

© All Music Guide