Rainbow Body: Barber: Symphony
No. 1; Copland: Suite from Appalachian Spring; Higdon: blue cathedral;
Theofanidis: Rainbow Body
Atlantic Symphony Orchestra; Robert Spano, conductor.
Telarc Surround SACD-60596
Format: Hybrid Multichannel SACD
| Musical Performance |
 |
| Recording Quality |
|
| Overall Enjoyment |
|
 Those of us of a certain age
remember Telarc as a tiny company that dared to go up against the major labels. These days
it's just about the last serious classical label -- and the number of Telarc
releases I receive outnumbers the combined classical outputs of all of those
tottering relics.
As the song in Gypsy puts it, "You Gotta Get A
Gimmick," and the major classical labels believe this to their souls. There are
extremely few "pure" classical releases coming out these days; most are
"crossover" (which is to say pop releases by big-name classical artists), or
theme records. Many of the themes are ridiculous bids for "relevance," but a few
make for intelligent programming. Telarc's collection of Hovhaness's mountain-themed
compositions was a good idea -- the works haven't been played (or recorded) to death and
they really do hang together thematically. And it doesn't hurt a bit that the
performance of Gerard Schwartz and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is spectacular.
Rainbow Body is another concept that works, although
there's no high-concept easily-reduced-to-a-catchphrase theme. Obviously, it's a
collection of American music "spanning the last two-thirds of the 20th Century,"
in the words of Telarc's press release. That seems a stretch -- Barber and Copland are
iconic 20th-Century American composers, of course, but Jennifer Higdon and Christopher
Theofanidis were born in the '60s and will probably be significant contributors to the
music of the 21st Century.
The collection hangs together, however. There's an
emotional directness and respect for melody evident throughout the four works which
cohere, despite the obvious differences in the composers' styles. Even more importantly,
each of them prefers simplicity over complexity. That may not make for an obvious or sexy
unifying concept, but the result is an appealing recording where all the pieces just fit.
A studied casualness is another sign of the recording's
motific unification: there is immense craft involved in making the outcome look natural
and unforced. In other words, the composers sweated all the details so you don't have to.
When was the last time you heard someone describe an album of modern classical music as
easy on the ears?
Christopher Theofanidis’ Rainbow Body is based
on Hildegard von Bingen’s chant "Ave Maria, O auctrix vite"
("Hail Mary, source of life"). Based on is the key concept here; it
doesn't sound medieval in the slightest. In fact, the first direct statement of Abbess
Hildegard's melody doesn't occur until a minute into the piece. Theofanidis returns to the
entire melody periodically throughout the piece, but he mainly plays around with it -- all
within a structure that develops dramatically and thematically in a manner completely
consonant with the symphonic structure we have developed over the past 150 years. Yet,
Theofanidis respects his source material while making something completely modern and
individual out of it -- I would be tempted to cite Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on
a Theme by Thomas Tallis as a parallel achievement were it not for my suspicion that
the Fantasia is more Tallis than RVW. One could very easily be unaware of
Hildegard's melodic contribution to Rainbow Body and still fall under its spell,
something I don't think is possible with the Tallis fantasia.
Barber's first symphony has never gotten the respect I
believe it deserves, but in recent years there has been a reconsideration of its stature
that has resulted in several excellent recordings of the work. This one now ranks as my
favorite, however, due to its controlled intensity. The first symphony is written in a
single movement, but it takes the form of a condensed version of the familiar sonata
allegro structure: vigorous opening section, a scherzo, a mournful third section, and
a rip-snorting finale -- all in just over 20 minutes. That contemplative, melancholy third
part is a pip -- it has the same emotional heft that marks Barber's far more famous Adagio
For Strings, without, of course, having been beaten into the ground from overexposure.
Copland's Suite from Appalachian Spring, naturally, has
been played and quoted and recorded countless times, and it's hard to make it sound fresh
after all this time. However, Spano and Atlanta rise to the challenge. They're helped, in
part, by the fact that the symphonic suite, once ubiquitous, has fallen out of vogue
recently -- the chamber score has received all the attention. Also helpful is the athletic
intensity the performers bring to the score; it was a dance piece, after all, and
the ASO imparts a leaping, gliding grace to the plainspoken lyricism of the composition.
Jennifer Higdon's blue cathedral, commissioned to
commemorate the Curtis Institute of Music's 75th anniversary, represents, in the
composer's words, "a journey through a glass cathedral in the sky." The listener
floats contemplatively among giant crystal pillars, and then speeds up, rushing forward,
ascending upward. Higdon sees the work as "a story that commemorates living and
passing through places of knowledge and of sharing and of that song called life."
blue cathedral lacks the relaxed melodicism of the
Theofanidis or Copland, tending toward the more severe internal logic of the Barber
symphony. That doesn't make it spiky or off-putting, any more than the Barber's carefully
wrought workmanship makes it sound complicated. The journey is vividly conveyed and
uplifting, full of majesty and wonder, just as Higdon intended.
The disc Rainbow Body's triumph, of course, isn't
merely an expression of good programming. The idea works because the performances are
first rate. Spano doesn't have the marquee pull of the superstar conductors, but he
certainly plays in the same league as the big boys -- and unlike so many of those
jet-setting superstars, he tackles challenging, interesting repertoire, not just the same
tired warhorses. In the ASO, he has a precise, powerful partner -- the equal of any
ensemble recording today.
Spano and the Atlanta Symphony have another partner in Rainbow
Body and that's legendary engineer Jack Renner, who has captured the sound of an
orchestra in its natural habitat (the Woodruff Arts Centre's Symphony Hall) with
breathtaking fidelity. The crashing brass'n'drum crescendo of Theofanidis' Rainbow Body
and the sustained wonder of blue cathedral are both captured here with precision
and p-p-power. The disc is reference quality, period -- whether you listen
to the CD layer or to the even more fantabulous DSD-encoded one.
Life's short. Spend some of it listening to this disc -- it
will be one choice you'll never regret.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
|
