This disc is a knockout: four new works, four talented living composers, four premieres, and not a single dud among them. The performances by the String Orchestra of New York are also stunning, perfectly coordinated, flawlessly in tune, rich-toned, and magnificently engineered. You can play this entire disc at a sitting and experience a wide range of styles and emotions, all accessible but never cheap or pandering. I mean, contemporary music collections simply don’t get any better. Let’s take a quick look at the individual works.
Chris Theofanidis has been getting a lot of attention lately, mainly through his orchestral premieres with the Atlanta Symphony that have been recorded by Telarc. Visions and Miracles is one of those pieces that’s so immediately enjoyable on its own that you wish he’d left off the titles. They only distract from his music’s vibrant rhythms and luminous timbres. Paul Moravec’s Morph is a symphonic poem based on the myth of Apollo and Daphne (you know, she gets turned into a tree at the end). It’s a lovely work, at times reminiscent of the sonority of Vaughan Williams’ Tallis Fantasia, at others recalling Britten’s Frank Bridge Variations, but the idiom is more advanced and the melodic substance is Moravec’s own.
Lisa Bielawa’s The Trojan Women has three short movements, each a character sketch: Hecuba, Cassandra, and Andromache. Given the subject matter, none of these portraits is exactly happy, but Bielawa creates an effective range of emotional contrasts nonetheless. Hecuba is gently anxious, Cassandra jaggedly rhythmic, and Andromache a picture of frozen stillness. Michael Gatonska’s Transformation of the Hummingbird is the closest of the four works to the textural experiments of today’s avant-garde, but none of its gestures sound gratuitous, and its imaginative textures consistently captivate. I hope you can see from these descriptions that all of these works are worth your time, and are cause for great optimism about the future of modern music. [3/11/2008]
