Schickele Takes a Quirky Look Back at FDR

The name Franklin D. Roosevelt still evokes a certain misty-eyed time and place to many who were alive in his era--and even those who weren’t can sense that feeling in the American popular and classical music of that time. Peter Schickele was there--at age 9, he witnessed Roosevelt’s funeral cortege in Washington, D.C.--and this indelible memory has triggered a piece of art, an attractive new cello concerto called “In Memoriam FDR.”

Yet this 23-minute work, heard for the first time at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium Saturday night, was not a nostalgic photograph, for it reflects Schickele’s uniquely quirky musical personality far more than any historical time period. Schickele has always been a scavenger of sorts--and it’s not surprising that he seemed to relish turning the Pasadena Symphony into a giant bluegrass band in the third movement, introducing a boogie continuo in the first movement, using tunes like “Ruby, Are You Mad at Your Man,” “Bewitched” and a J.S. Bach cello suite.

Everything was filtered through a whimsical prism; even Schickele’s suggestion of FDR’s cortege in the final movement was lightly colored, almost arch, looking in a detached, ironic way at something that happened long ago. That makes sense for this irreverent musician; could you imagine him settling for a patriotic elegy or potboiler? Along with Paul Tobias’ superb solo cello, it was also appropriate to have Schickele’s old classmate and onetime P.D.Q. Bach co-conspirator, Jorge Mester, on the podium.

Mester surrounded his friend’s work with zesty, swaggering performances of a couple of genuine souvenirs from FDR’s time--Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Weber and Moncayo’s pounding showpiece “Huapango”--and a bluntly Beethovenian rendition of one ringer, Schubert’s Symphony No. 3.