March 4, 2011

  • Review: New Atlanto SO Release (Higdon & Gandolfi)

     

    Higdon/Gandolfi
    Eighth Blackbird Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus/Robert Spano
    Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Media 1001
    Total Time:  48:55
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

     

    Soon musicologists might be able to begin to discern an “Atlanta” school of composers style as the symphony there continues to commission new music and record some of the most popular composers of the past 25 years.  The orchestra’s own label debuts with two works by composers who have risen to the top of their generation.  Jennifer Higdon’s music is perhaps among some of the most performed contemporary music today with plenty of recordings of her music helping to increase awareness of her style.  Michael Gandolfi has also been fortunate to have his big orchestral works appear prominently on Telarc and other familiar labels.  Both are often championed by Spano and the orchestra and are each represented here by a single work.

    The disc opens with On a Wire—a unique work in that it is a concerto for a sextet and orchestra.  Eighth Blackbird is a sextet of flutes, clarinets, strings, percussion (here mallets), and piano.  Higdon explores both the ability of the ensemble to play these instruments traditionally as well as their ability to expand to non-traditional instruments or reproduction of sound.  The music is completely accessible and moves from bubbling energy to deeply moving lyric lines while the orchestra appears to provide larger connective transitions and commentary.  The piece is also designed as a visual experience as the musicians tend to move about on stage as they perform.  It is this movement that Higdon captures in her title, imagining birds moving about on a telephone wire.  Cast in one continuous movement with three somewhat distinct sections, On a Wire provides ample opportunity for the sextet to show off their musicianship.  The final section manages to create a great deal of interesting energy around a rhythmic idea that builds through various percussion instruments and then moves from the piano and solo instruments to be taken up by the orchestra.  It reaches near jazz-like sound by its final bars.  The recording allows for the soloists to be fairly close-miked but not obtrusively so.  The piece begins very quietly (due to the use of an unusual performance idea that looks great but is harder to hear without the visual) but soon equalizes itself well against the orchestra.

    Gandolfi likes to paint on a large orchestral palette and fortunately has been able to do so with an orchestra the caliber of the Atlanta Symphony.  His work, Q,E,D,: Engaging Richard Feynman is inspired by the humor and dialoguing approach taken by the Nobel laureate theoretical physicist Richard Feynman.  The texts though are taken from a variety of mostly American poets (Stein, Dickinson, Emerson, Whitman), the Irish poet Joseph Campbell, and the British poet Siegfried Sassoon.  These mostly mid-19th century and early 20th century texts form the basis for this large-scale orchestral and choral work that is part of a post-Romantic orchestral tradition.  The more traditional harmonies are coupled with open fourths and fifths that move in beautiful, often angular, melodic arcs.  Strings and chorus are often doubled for support while winds, brass, and percussion create other layers of sound and rhythmic punctuations around them.  There are some moments in the first movement, “In Waking,” that are crosses between a minimalist Hollywood-like orchestral sound and a dramatic post-Wagnerian melodic writing with string descents that are only missing the ultra-chromaticism of the late 19th Century.  ”Song of the Universal” provides a more post-minimalist Romantic backdrop in a quickly-paced movement that lets the various sections of the choir respond to each other (with an aleatoric spoken section creating a sense of fun for the ending) and plays with the sound of words more than the opening movement.  The multiple asymmetrical writing also helps create delightfully engaging music in rich harmonies.  The music is all brightly-scored with traditional harmony and the highlight here is how the orchestra and the choir are played off one another as sections and as individual musical ideas in different dress.

    The choir writing at times is reminiscent of Delius as well.  It is this fascinating blend of sounds in such brilliant orchestration that makes Gandolfi’s music so fascinating to listen to and engaging.  Perhaps intending to mimic Feynman’s discourse, the music itself shifts through musical allusions that suggest other musical periods while continuing a full choral style firmly in the American tradition.

    The accompanying booklet includes texts and commentary about Gandolfi’s work with brief information for Higdon’s.  There is good biographical background for both of these composers to help introduce them to the audience for this disc.  Overall this is a stellar entry from Atlanta with warm orchestral sound for two wonderful new pieces worth exploring for fans of contemporary orchestral music.