Antheil, who entitled his autobiography Bad Boy of Music, is best known for his Ballet mecanique which created a sensation in Paris in 1926, but flopped in New York causing him to be written off - prematurely. Almost 70 years later Ballet mecanique was successfully revived at the BBC Proms and on CD (4/94; 12/96). But that early disaster affected Antheil's career for more than a decade and he was obliged to work as a journalist, becoming a war correspondent for the Los Angeles Daily News in 1940.
The apocalyptic events of the early war years gave rise to Antheil's Fourth Symphony. Eugene Goossens, whose 1959 recording with the LSO has represented the work on record ever since, regarded it as a 'fruition of talents'. Goossens was wrong to dismiss Ballet mecanique, which he'd conducted, but right about the symphony, which shows the exuberant idealism of the period without merely reflecting Antheil's work for Hollywood. At times it sounds like a celebration of the alliance with Russia, but Antheil pointed out that the portions thought to derive from Shostakovich were actually taken from his 1928 opera, Transatlantic. The four-movement Symphony is so rumbustiously energetic that there is no room for a slow movement, although there are many lyrical passages and some ingenious tone-colours.
The Sixth Symphony is the newcomer and this, too, is a response to the war - after the event. Ivesian quotations of patriotic songs and the syncopations of the riotous finale give an ebullient American flavour to another symphonic epic.
Goossens' performance of the Fourth, apart from its raucous sound, still sounds cogent and powerful; and Kuchar serves all three works admirably; the whole release is a winning reminder of Antheil's individuality in his final period.
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