American Masters: Francis THORNE. Nocturnes (1963); Fanfare, Fugue & Funk (1972); Lyric Variations #2 (1975); Third String Quartet (1975). Flute Sonatina (1962). CRI CD 828 (64:20).

Francis Thorne has had an unusual, yet rich career. Despite receiving a B.A. in music from Yale, Thorne spent a good bit of time as a stockbroker, banker, and jazz pianist before settling on a concert music composer's career at the age of 34. This career has seen him write over 100 works for all media while serving at various times as executive director of the American Composers Alliance and Lenox Arts Center, founder of the American Composers Orchestra and Thorne Music Fund, and member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Stylistically, he is a rare fish indeed, perhaps the only dissonant-manner East Coast composer active during the 1960's and 1970's whose music showed an unabashed popular music influence. Jazz elements pervade the selections on this CD, notably in the orchestral Fanfare, Fugue & Funk (replete with wailing trumpets and twanging electric guitar), the song “Horace 1, 25” from Nocturnes (with its boogie style piano figuration and raw torch-song vocals), and the first movement of the Flute Sonatina. But this music has many fathers from the “legit” side of the ledger, albeit highly filtered to fit Thorne's personal ethos. The Third String Quartet's utilization of glissandi, spiky harmonies, and pizzicato-heavy scherzando writing takes a bow to Bartok's masterworks in he genre. Fanfare, Fugue & Funk at times echoes the merry, clangorous music heard in Charles Ives' Fourth of July and in the second movement of the Fourth Symphony. Ivesian too are the dissonant pattern-style accompaniments found in the song cycle Nocturnes. Thorne's work is sometimes serial, and in Lyric Variations #2 (for wind quintet and percussionist) the music's concise, cellular writing recalls Webern. But this reviewer never thought “style study” here; what will strike the listener is Thorne's imaginative co-opting of varied approaches to create a unique sound world (the fusion of serialism and jazz influences is especially well handled) and the music's splendid combination of charm, depth, and energy—something rarely encountered in the oeuvre of any composer. These pieces are first-class entities, very much deserving of a wider audience.

As in all of CRI's American Masters entries, we find cleaned-up reissues of material previously found on vinyl. Surprisingly, only one item (Third String Quartet) is an earlier CRI release; Fanfare, Fugue & Funk initially appeared on an Opus One disc, while the rest are taken from the Serenus Records catalog. Production here is among the best this critic has heard in the series, with only occasional fuzzy sound in Nocturnes and periodic audible splices in Fanfare, Fugue & Funk and Lyric Variations #2 detracting from the otherwise solid sonics.

Performances are excellent. Flutist Harvey Sollberger and the Group for Contemporary Music String Quartet play stunningly well, while soprano Catherine Rowe and pianist Thorne provide expert turns of their own. The Springfield Symphony Orchestra (Robert Gutter, conductor) and the Boehm Quintet (joined by percussionist Richard Fitz) perform with style and gusto, more than making up for the occasional minor glitch. This is a highly recommended CD, a definite must-hear.

David Cleary