Overture Leonora No. 2 - Beethoven

Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat - Liszt

To a Wild Rose - Edward McDowell

Stndchen von Shakespeare - Liszt

Suite No 2 `Indian' - Edward McDowell

Music historians tell us that American composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries wrote like transplanted Europeans, and these pieces by Edward McDowell, the leading American composer of the pre-Ives era, bear this out. His "Indian" Suite from 1895 contains actual Native American material from the Iroquois, Chippewa, Iowa and Kiowa tribes, but the effect remains obstinately European, a little ethnic seasoning at best. This is not to deny that the ideas as such are good; McDowell's real failing is an inability to develop them and sustain them, which is why his piano miniature, To A Wild Rose, is much more successful as a piece. But he writes well for the orchestra, and the slow fourth movement is worth rescuing from its surroundings.

McDowell was encouraged by Liszt, whose E flat Piano Concerto was played by Malcolm Binns with an excellent technique which was at its most effective in the brilliant finale. The first movement needs an element of bravura which was missing here, and a deeper sense of poetry would have benefited the nocturne-like slow movement, but fortunately the programme featured two built-in encores in the shape of the McDowell miniature and Liszt's brilliant transcription of Schubert's setting of `Hark, hark! The lark.'

Off-stage brass solos link the Beethoven to the McDowell. The performance here was correct, if not perhaps quite warmed-up, but elsewhere Yuasa obtained committed playing from the Ulster Orchestra.