February 9, 2011

  • Review: Michael Daugherty's "Route 66" and more

    Daugherty: Route 66/Ghost Ranch/Time Machine/Sunset Strip
    Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Marin Alsop
    Naxos 8.559613
    Total Time:  68:49
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Daugherty: Metropolis Symphony/Deux ex Machina
    Terrence Wilson, piano. Nashville Symphony/Giancarlo Guerrero
    Naxos 8.559635
    Total Time:  75:55
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

     

    Michael Daugherty has become one of the 10 most performed living American composers.  His dramatic sense and brilliant orchestration demonstrated in engaging, and audience-pleasing, orchestral works have helped him carve out that respect over the past twenty years.  Marin Alsop’s new release is a sort of musical journey from the familiar into time and space and features four pieces composed over the last ten years.  But it is important to start with the work that began Daugherty’s rise in the orchestral world, Metropolis Symphony. 

    The 2009 Naxos recording is a critically acclaimed release that features a piano concerto and the Metropolis Symphony in a generous 75-minute recording.  The symphony was begun in 1988 and premiered in 1994 by its dedicatee David Zinman with the Baltimore Symphony.  The work is a paean to comic book heroes, and specifically the iconic Superman.  Cast in five movements, the work is really a series of miniatures dramatically depicting specific scenarios or characters.  The first movement (“Lex”) focuses on Lex Luthor in what is a scherzo-like piece reminiscent of a Hollywood action cue.  Daugherty’s musical language pulls together the threads of contemporary classical music (the scurrying, almost aleatoric segments show influence of Ligeti and Penderecki), with the sort of action adventure music one hears in the film works of say Goldsmith or Goldenthal.  Beyond the always brilliant orchestration, is the flirtation with jazz and popular musical sounds and an innate structural sense that allows even the strangest of musical combinations to be comprehended by the listener.  Hear how in “Krypton” Daugherty takes a small motivic idea and then begins to infiltrate the entire orchestra with this idea sometimes in more traditional post-romantic sound sometimes in an almost Antheil-like Ballet Mecanique.  The interior movements are a bit less interesting but the work ends with the somewhat overlong, but no less interesting “Red Cape Tango” (a tango based on “Ðies Irae“).  The work can be performed in any number of combinations as each moment can stand alone, a smart move for what amounts to a 43-minute contemporary symphony.  The other work on this release is inspired by trains and is essentially a 3-movement piano concerto that is fairly engaging even without its programmatic overtones.  Again, this is another perfect way to hear how Daugherty’s structural sense allows listeners an entry point for a deeper appreciation of the music that has form besides just being an engaging listening experience.  The live recording has some minimal audience applause dialed out at the end.  The release is one of those essential music library recordings of contemporary American music that will increase the appreciation of the new release under review here.  To say that the Nashville Symphony performs brilliantly is an understatement and they are given about the best recorded sound for which one could wish.  The disc is an important companion to the new release with the Bournemouth orchestra and has been nominated for 4 Grammys this year.

    Marin Alsop has been a champion of Daugherty’s music for 20 years and her release, with the Bournemouth Symphony, is a chance to see if how a European orchestra can respond to this music.  Each of the four works recorded moves through evocations of American landscapes and even into the fourth dimension.  The opening piece, Route 66 (1998), is an overture-like work that takes the listener through a musical journey down “Main Street America.”  Someone might take a look at all these brief little post-minimalist works that are about the American automobile or travel as there are quite a number of them from the 1990s.  At any rate, the work is intended to briefly show off different parts of the orchestra with fun dance-like rhythms and jazzy flourishes.  In some respects it feels like a brief study for the same idea explored by Daugherty in Sunset Strip composed about the same time.  Sunset Strip (1999) appeared on a BIS release with the North Carolina Symphony not long ago sharing space with other jazz-influenced works among them John Williams’ Escapades.  That is a release worth tracking down for its variety.  The work is another musical road trip down Sunset Boulevard and features a variety of musical borrowings of styles and pop sounds.  It is perhaps Daugherty’s best work easily capable of sharing space with Gershwin’s big orchestral jazz works.

    Ghost Ranch (2006) is a three-movement work inspired by the life and paintings of Georgia O’Keefe.  Alsop and the Bournemouth Symphony commissioned this work of intriguing stark contrasts.  Though there is some of that nervous energy one hears in Daugherty’s other music, this piece tends to focus on many gorgeously orchestrated melodic ideas.  The opening movement, “Bones,” is a beautifully lyrical work with an engaging thematic idea that is presented at its start and then somewhat deconstructed through the orchestra in various rhythmic variations that is connected by an underlying pulse (not quite minimalistic in nature) and occasionally romantic harmonies.  “Above Clouds” is a study in orchestral crescendo that starts low in the orchestra and then works its way upwards to soaring French horns.  “Black Rattle” concludes the work in an almost cinematic style of writing that also has a “rattle” idea that is moved through the ensemble and appears in different guises.  While Ghost Ranch feels like three independent musical ideas conveniently connected, there is no denying its emotional power that feels more personal than the other works in the composer’s canon.

    The final piece on the disc is Time Machine (2003).  The piece is in one sense a conceptual art work in that it requires the orchestra to be spatially separated into three units each requiring its own conductor.  This might limit the work’s performances, and in recordings a potential nightmare to image the ensembles correctly.  The three groups are located stage left, center stage, and stage right.  Somehow Naxos does manage to create a fine imaging, helped by which instruments are part of each orchestral segment.  The work is cast in two movements.  The first, “Past,” has an almost hymn-like quality with a long melodic idea on stage left in strings that is offset by winds and percussion ideas coming from center and right of the sound pattern.  By creating these three ensembles, Daugherty is able to create fascinating blend of rhythmic variety and mixed meters that when played together feel almost as if they are melding in to some new whole.  In “Future,” Daugherty is experimenting with controlled aleatoric musical ideas by creating a variety of modules that can be played in controlled randomness decided on by the three conductors.  The movement is quite eerie as it begins and harp ideas lend it a sort of shimmering texture that references motion in time.  Unusual sounds are explored more here than in other works Daugherty has composed and this is perhaps closest to Ligeti, though far less atonal, then anything else on this disc, or perhaps in the composer’s work to date suggesting that he too is exploring and evolving his music from those early more romantically-filled works.

    The Bournemouth orchestra engages these pieces with commitment and is on brilliant display in the sound picture captured throughout.  The sound is a bit warmer than that Naxos used in their Nashville recording (though this may have more to do with the recording venue than any electronic tampering).  These pieces provide several windows into Daugherty’s music that continues to develop a narrative flow that many will hear as cinematic reference.  The selections here also bring in folk dance and pop music threads that lend the works a freshness and familiarity somehow at the same time.  This will be an essential release for students of contemporary music.  Highly recommended.

    Taken together, one can discover not only Daugherty’s most familiar works, but also get a sense of his development as a composer.  The performances are simply demonstration quality throughout.