It’s Appalachian/Classical Crossover. Mark O’Connor is featured as fiddler, violinist, and composer on this Sony CD of his own works, The American Seasons. O’Connor may be known to audiences here from his performances with YoYo Ma and Edgar Meyer on the Appalachian Journey and Heartland CDs. American Seasons offers more of the same--a hearty dose of American folk music--fiddle tunes from the South, Blues, Texas Swing and more translated through postmodern ears. It’s as if Igor Stravinsky had used Appalachian folk tunes as the basis for his Pulcinella suite, and flavored it all with touches of Vivaldi, Philip Glass, Bartok and even Yanni. As such, the music is wildly vibrant, rhythmically energetic, filled with the idioms of folk music but using the structures of the classical world. It has occasional mild harmonic dissonances but is always melodic and often completely diatonic. At their best, O’Connor’s compositions sparkle with life, at their worst, annoyingly tedious because of the constant repetition of notes, rhythms and melodic formulae.

That was a bit of the fourth movement, Winter, of The American Seasons, for violin and orchestra. And it goes on and on like that. Furthermore, the melodic figure that we’ve just heard treated so obsessively is not new to this movement--it is the same figure that has occured throughout the four movement concerto. Much of the first movement is hardly distinguishable from the last. The liner notes tell us "The more you hear The American Seasons, the more you realize that it’s built on a mere handful of motifs, and that O’Connor is learning the parsimonious cunning of a master." True, but when Berlioz or Beethoven do this, the transformations of those motifs fascinate us instead of driving us to distraction. Development is not O’Connor’s strength.

But although O’Connor isn’t yet a great composer, he certainly is a great performer. His training is far from classical--he’s a U.S. fiddle champion whose roots lie in the folk music traditions of Texas and the American South, with further training from jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli. But he’s managed to incorporate the classical violin sound into his playing, smoothing out the roughness of the traditional fiddle sound. O’Connor doesn’t attain the lushness of a violinist like Gidon Kremer, but then he doesn’t strive for that, and his unique tone quality and virtuostic technique are enviable.

More enjoyable than the titular concerto are the two other works on the CD, the Strings and Threads Suite and the Appalachia Waltz. Strings and Threads is a collection of thirteen short movements written in the styles of various fiddle traditions, from which we’ve just heard three movements. It’s a wonderfully tuneful piece without the pretentions and consequent miscues of The American Seasons, and totally delightful. Finally, the gentle and quietly elegant Appalachia Waltz is reminiscent of Aaron Copland at his best. Let’s close with that piece.