Warhol Wins!

The award for outstanding achievement in product licensing, the LIMA, was announced Wednesday evening in New York. The winner was Andy Warhol. Yes, that's right: Andy, the new Elvis. The LIMA awards are like the Academy Awards of the Licensing Industry and could mean huge profits to any person or group that wins. Others in the running were Vera Bradly, the fashion designer; Thomas Kinkade, the painter of light and previous multiple winner; and newcomer Sandra Magsamen, one of my favorites. There's always next year.

Don Quixote and Music, Part 2

Available at Amazon: Don Quixote, new translation by Edith Grossman (released on October 21, 2003) Don Quixote (online version, English translation) Don Quijote (online version, Spanish original) Ruta de Don Quijote (pilgrimage route following Don Quixote around Spain) Don Quijote de La Mancha: Romances y Músicas, Montserrat Figueras, Hespèrion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Jordi Savall (released on January 10, 2006)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
In 2005, Miguel de Cervantes's superlative novel Don Quixote was 400 years old. Later the same year, I took note (Jordi Savall and Cervantes, December 8, 2005) of a recording project undertaken by Jordi Savall with his performing groups, Hespèrion XXI and La Capella Reial de Catalunya, to recreate the "soundtrack" of Don Quixote. Every time that Cervantes mentions music being performed, which is quite often, Savall and friends tried to find the actual piece referenced by Cervantes or, when that was not possible, to find something from the period that was appropriate for what is described in the novel. Now that a copy of that 2-CD set has come into my hands, I am rereading Don Quixote and examining the sounds of the recording in conjunction with that reading. Readers are invited to join the Ionarts Book Club and make comments based on their own reading.

Don Quixote is a country gentleman, and the landscape that he sets out across in the next section (Part 2, First sallies) is agrarian and rustic. The second reading is intoned over a beautiful setting of a popular tune, Guardame las Vacas (Watch my cows, four diferencias by Luys de Narváez), played on vihuela. It's an example of the musical fabric of the novel that this recording supplies, in this case, not something even specifically mentioned by Cervantes. It is a hot July day, and the livestock are in the broad fields:

Donning all his armor, mounting Rocinante, adjusting his ill-contrived helmet, bracing his shield on his arm, and taking up his lance, he sallied forth by the back gate of his stable yard into the open countryside. It was with great contentment and joy that he saw how easily he had made a beginning toward the fulfillment of his desire. (Part I, Chapter 2)

We are soon introduced to the habit of el ingenioso hidalgo to quote or paraphrase from his extensive reading of chivalric romances. Often, Quixote cites a few lines of a ballad, and in this chapter, he does so first to the innkeeper, saying, "Arms are my only ornament, / My only rest the fight." These are lines from the words of the Moor in the Ballad of Moriana: With a start the Moor awoke, an anonymous text which Savall has provided in the setting by Luys Milán. The innkeeper, who Cervantes tells us has seen something of the world, recognizes the text and answers with the next two lines, changing the text so that he addresses Don Quixote, "Your bed will be the solid rock, / Your sleep, to watch all night."

The next reading on the CD relates Don Quixote's recitation of the Ancient Ballad of Lancelot (Nunca fuera caballero de damas tan bien servido), as he speaks to the two prostitutes at the gate of the inn (mentioned in the first part of this series):

Original Text: For never was there any knight so served by damsel or dame, as brave Sir Lancelot du Lac, when he from Brittany came: damsels ministered to him; His horse was tended by dames.

Don Quixote: Never was knight so honored by ladies as Don Quixote when he rode forth from his town: damsels ministered unto him; and princesses took charge of his steed.

Savall gives us a beautiful arrangment of this Sephardic ballad, with his wife, Montserrat Figueras, and daughter singing. The way that this CD vividly recreates the sonic life of Don Quixote is extraordinary.

To be continued.

For the Family: Pecking Along with the Firebird

Robert R. Reilly, music critic for CRISIS and author of Ionarts-recommended Surprised by Beauty, was at the Kennedy Center for Ionarts, testing the child-friendliness of the NSO's Family concert with the help of his own son.


I thought I was cheating. The National Symphony Orchestra Web site suggested that children be at least seven years old to attend the family concert, The Magic of the Firebird, on Sunday, June 18th. My youngest son is six. I snuck him in anyway. I was making allowances not only for his height – he could easily pass for seven or eight – but also because my children are thoroughly immersed in classical music as a kind of amniotic sound in and ex utero. They instinctively know what bad music is because of their exposure to good music.

As an opposite kind of Gresham’s law, good music actually drives bad music out. My oldest son – then 10 – after being forced to listen to run-of-the mill, low-quality rock in a friend’s father’s car, vented his frustration. Why, I asked, didn’t you like it? “It is irritating to the mind,” he replied. Exactly.

This concert was part of a laudable effort by the National Symphony Orchestra to expose kids to musical quality, thus inoculating them against these inevitable irritations from a lobotomized pop culture. At least they will know that they are irritations. Also, my six-year-old insisted on a concert because his older brother and sister had already been to the Kennedy Center. This was the solution.

Before the conductor appeared, I asked my son if he would like me to read to him the story of the Firebird, neatly provided in a colorful cue sheet for families by the Kennedy Center. He declined. “I’d rather listen to the music,” he said, displaying a preference for the absolute over the descriptive.

Conductor Emil de Cou took the stage, however, and told the story anyway. First, however, he introduced and conducted an excerpt from Sleeping Beauty. This seemed to transfix my son sufficiently that he never removed two fingers thoughtfully poised on his lips. Then came the Sinbad excerpt from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, with the wonderful crashing waves and wrecked ship.

Finally, De Cou recited the Firebird narrative, illustrating it with orchestral excerpts. He succeeded in his delicate mission because he did not try to be cute, a terminally fatal attitude afflicting condescending adults. Then he and the NSO engagingly played the Firebird Suite (1919 version).

My son was reasonably attentive. He was also attracted by the overhead screen that displayed occasional figure drawings showing what the prince and Firebird were up to, as well as live close-ups of the featured instrumentalists. I could see he was flagging as the Firebird lulled the ogres into a deep sleep, but he was bolt upright when King Kastchei attacked. “When the music got rough, it really got my attention,” he reported.

My son has not asked to listen to more Stravinsky, but I think this was a success nonetheless. It seemed so for the general audience that included many children at least as young if not younger than my son. I saw only one baby removed. In fact, the kids were remarkably well behaved.

What about the adults, you are wondering? The family behind me was, I hope, not typical. Before that concert began, the mother announced to herself that this was their first time in the concert hall. As she examined the surroundings, she exclaimed to her daughter, “Look, dear, the whole ceiling is made of octagons.” I looked up. They are hexagons.

The father of this family never saw fit to inform the boy behind me that kicking the chair in front of him was gauche. The boy was trying to be quiet in his paper folding exercises but was ceaseless in them as well. Dad saw no problem with this, and only interrupted to read to the boy from the sous-titres on the overhead projector during the performance. Mom also thought that whispering was part of the fun, modulating her voice to follow the volume of the sound. Orchestral tutti provided opportunities for near normal conversational levels.

But this is carping. The NSO is doing the right thing, and doing it well. How about some family concerts for parents on etiquette?

Matthias Maute Goes It Alone

After a concert on Monday night with Modern Musick, recorder virtuoso Matthias Maute was back at St. Mark's Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill, where the Washington Early Music Festival is in residence all this week. As Keith Reas, the director of music at St. Mark's put it in his brief introductory remarks, this was a solo recital, nothing but "a man and a table full of recorders." Does anyone really want to hear two hours of recorder music and nothing but one man playing a recorder, or rather twelve of them? If anyone could make this work, I felt sure, it was Matthias Maute, whose praises I have sung before. Whenever I like a performer's playing this much, that music critic voice in my head starts accusing me of complacency, lazy listening, being a fan. So I took Mrs. Ionarts, a flutist and one-time teacher of the recorder to children, along last night to hear him play. She was just as impressed as I have been.

Available at Amazon: Shades of Red (Vivaldi concerti), Matthias Maute, REBEL Ensemble (released on May 31, 2005)

Maute's program was not solely "early music" and it was not exclusively about Italy, the theme of this year's festival. It did begin with four Italian pieces from 14th-century Italy, including two whirling dances (the Istanpitta Tre Fontane and a saltarello). The prettiest of this set was a meditative reading of a lauda melody, Lo'ntellecto divino, in honor of St. Augustine. The strangest effect was accomplished by Maute's direction of the audience to hum on an open fifth, sounding like a bagpipe and not a very good one at that, while he played the Lamento di Tristano.

This was balanced by four selections by blind carilloneur and recorder virtuoso Jacob van Eyck from Utrecht. The first two pieces were variation sets on Italian melodies, including a fascinating setting of Caccini's Amarilli mia bella, probably the most famous monody in his Le nuove musiche (1601). Maute was actually able to play harmonies by simultaneously humming and playing his bass recorder on this piece. Maute claimed that his "favorite melody" by van Eyck is one he played, Doen Daphne d'over schoone Maeght, which van Eyck contorts into remarkably difficult variations. Maute then turned the end of Engels Nachtegaeltje, a song describing the twittering of nightingales, into a joke as his birdsong merged with a recorded track of birds.

Early Music Festival on Ionarts: Charles T. Downey, Modern Musick and Matthias Maute (June 20) Jens F. Laurson, Cavalli, "La Didone" (June 18) Charles T. Downey, Mozart, "Idomeneo" (June 4)

Maute also played adaptations of two concerti originally written for other instruments. The best piece on the program was his own arrangement of an F major concerto, attributed (falsely) to Handel. Whoever the composer, the piece is good listening that reminded me of J. S. Bach. One of those famous pedal effects was miraculously rendered here by a single recorder -- the same low note repeated at the start of every harmonic group. Maute played the other adaptation -- Vivaldi's Spring concerto arranged by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, no less, probably a work he encountered during his stay in Venice -- on the traverso, the transverse flute, a Baroque version of the modern flute.

In this performance, Maute went less for the programmatic nature of the music -- there was no barking dog here in the second movement, a sound Vivaldi gives to the hapless viola -- although again his evocation of the birdsongs of the first movement, not to mention the murmuring breezes, was nice. However, this piece was the least successful of the evening, with Maute showing the one weakness of his phenomenal technique, when he was not playing a recorder. The concert closed on another superlative performance, a recorder adaptation of Bach's partita for solo flute, composed for the transverse flute. This complex and rewarding piece, played regularly by Mrs. Ionarts and every other flutist on the planet, sounded vivid and new in Maute's hands. It was a shame that more people did not come out to St. Mark's to hear this exceptional concert.

Mediocrity, Not Betrayal, Does Giselle In

Please note that earlier today, I misidentified the lead dancers in this review. Irina Golub and Andrian Fadeyev (neither seen nor reviewed) must be considered innocent. Olesya Novikova and Leonid Sarafanov, the other alternative couple, were reviewed (together with Pavleko/Kolb) by Jean Battey Lewis for the Washington Times.

The Kirov-slash-Mariinsky, fond of spreading its cultural riches far and wide – and surely not unaware of the benefits of hard currency – makes Washington, D.C., a regular stop on its tours. We are thankful, especially if Gergiev himself manages to lead the main band in enthralling performances (Verdi Requiem); truth be told, Washington is usually just as grateful even if they give us something from a lower shelf. And the Kirov knows that. Or so it seemed when they sent the Kirov Ballet to D.C., except that they forgot to ship the best soloists in.

We are not a culturally discriminating town and ought not complain that the best is withheld from us in favor of London, St. Petersburg, or Vienna – perhaps even New York – performances. The indiscriminate applause for just about any “scene” of Giselle (even at the fact that there was “fog” on stage for the second act), last Sunday, seemed to underscore that point. If, however, some audience members were curiously unmoved or not entirely convinced that Giselle is in fact one of the best, certainly most dramatic, classical (well, Romantic) ballets there is, well, it may have had something to do with Daria Pavlenko in the title role and Igor Kolb as Count Albrecht, the male lead.

The two displayed the kind of dancing that an expert ballet watcher will find full of flaws, fraught with sloppy execution, insufficient extension, insecure landings, and too little air. The more casual observer – and I count myself among them – merely wonders what the whole dancing business is all about; why people get quite so excited about Giselle, or any other ballet, for that matter, in the first place. Giselle has everything that should make it at the very least enjoyable: for a ballet of its time (1842), it has superior music (by Adolphe Adam; inferior still to Delibes or Tchaikovsky, but leagues above the kind professional hacks like Minkus churned out), suffers from a hackneyed story no more than ballets all tend to do (the fewer humans involved – Mandarin, Coppelia – the better it usually is for a ballet’s story-line; but that’s based on a rather flimsy survey of mine) and comes with its tried and true, ever popular Marius Petipa choreography (with a little Jean Coralli here, a little Jules Perrot there) from 1884, in a reconstruction of which the Kirov presented this work.

I need not be detailed in my particular feelings about any interpretive art form (like ballet or theater or opera) being offered in a way that carefully excised any and all hints of new ideas over the last 130 years – but in the combination with sub-par dancing it didn’t help the appreciation of this production. The morticians who applied the lovely (cliché-expectation fulfilling) set and costume design are Igor Ivanov and Irina Press. In this form, ballet has only an accidental relation with other art forms we cover at Ionarts, namely being the off-and-on paymaster – and occasionally inspiration – of some composers. Indulging so deliberately in the artificial, its stylized ways can be either entrancing to the newcomer, or more off-putting than the haughty, pompous, screeching world of opera. In fact, it makes your average Donizetti opera look like a study in dramatic realism.

Other Reviews: Jean Battey Lewis, Kirov bows after 'Giselle' (Washington Times, June 19) Sarah Kaufman, From the Kirov, A Bright and Buoyant 'Giselle' (Washington Post, June 19)

All this came to the fore because the listless performance of the lead dancers never managed to kindle the necessary suspension of disbelief; because neither Pavlenko nor Kolb managed to offer that extra bit of excellence that transports the viewer and enchants him or her. Instead, what Count Albrecht and - in this case - his rival Hans (Dmitry Pykhachev) delivered amounted to little more than homoerotic pantomime in tights. Both Giselle and Tavarisch Albrecht were artificial in the portrayal of their roles. One could tell they did not believe an iota of their character’s emotions, and consequently we ourselves refused to believe. Giselle did not go mad: she became, by turn of fate, surely, idiotic. To all that, Kolb was digging out every effeminate and affected stock-phrase in order to undermine even the last remnant of a sense of masculinity in his role, offering but a sad stereotype of ballet dancers rather than the real thing. It took only the fine Ekaterina Osmolkina and the exemplary Vladimir Shklyarov to show, if briefly, how ballet can be danced without succumbing to all these shortfalls, when they stole the show in the first act Pas de deux. Alina Somova’s Myrtha, too, was very good (if not great) in her regal potrayal – and unlike Giselle, the Fairy-Queen didn’t stumble.

On a more positive positive note the Corps de Ballet must be mentioned as having been very good – in the first scene even excellent. I grew up in a time when classical ballet – and by that we instinctively thought of the Kirov or Bolshoi as prime exponents – meant perfection, when symmetry was not something to be approximated but executed with machine-like precision. This is a skill that has all but disappeared, even from Russian troupes (the art only survives in synchronized swimming) – but here it faintly peeked through every so often. In that, these scores of girls were already better than anything I’ve seen of late. With their quality, they kept a tantalizing hope alive that was never fulfilled by the Kirov’s second or third string of soloists. Perhaps that hope would be better invested in the Kirov not shortchanging this little backwater town of ours, Washington, next season?

Barenboim's Abschied

Daniel Barenboim, outgoing Music Director of the Chicago Symphony, bowed out with an unusual gesture: three final one-off performances, each dedicated to a valedictory 9th Symphony by three greats of the Austro-German repertoire: Mahler, Bruckner, and Beethoven.

Mahler. The first of these Abschied-concerts, Thursday night at Chicago's Orchestra Hall, showed this conductor-orchestra combination at their mind-bending best. When a great orchestra with an often-great leader actually performs greatly, all bets are off: and so it proved with Mahler's 9th.

Barenboim's reading was trenchant and distinctive, cueing off Mahler's fade-out ending to color the entire performance. The opening bars of the Andante comodo had a vague, grey sound, string tone stripped of color to devastating effect. The movement's exposition and development were executed in crisp, muscular style but with no harshness, the textures fully transparent even in the loudest climaxes. Almost a blend of Walter's intensity (1938) and Karajan's technical control (1982 -- both live recordings!), but distinctly Barenboim.

The second-movement Ländler (three Ländlers in distinct tempi) was tightly integrated, introducing a bit more color into the playing, with a wonderful chamber-like balance at the end. The Rondo-burleske took it up a notch, controlled intensity but with more overt expression from the players. This carried into the final Adagio, which swept everything away, somewhat fast but with unerring feel for tension-and-release. The fortissimo climax had X-ray clarity, the brass burnished, not brilliant, clearing the way to Mahler's morendo ending, the quietest possible string playing tangible in the air, the sense of relaxation as the music expires achieved by the tightest control from the podium. This was risk-taking live performance at its best.

Other Reviews: Daniel Ginsberg, Barenboim Bids Chicago Adieu in Classic Fashion (Washington Post, June 19) James R. Oestreich, Barenboim's Warm Farewell to Chicago (New York Times, June 19) Wynne Delacoma, Barenboim's farewell is a memorable feast (Chicago Sun-Times, June 19) Andrew Patner, CSO lauds departing Barenboim as 'conductor for life' (Chicago Sun-Times, June 19) John van Rhein, Barenboim, Beethoven rule (Chicago Tribune, June 19) Michael Henderson, Goodbye Chicago, hello world (The Telegraph, June 20) Jeremy Grant, Indelible stamp on Chicago Symphony (Financial Times, June 20)

The Mahler was preceded by Elliot Carter's Soundings in its second performance of the season (the CSO under Barenboim premiered it last October), 12 minutes of sound-play with a great orchestra, which also puts Barenboim the pianist to the test. This performance was warmer and more nuanced than the October premiere, and well received by the audience...in the presence of the indefatigable near-98-year-old composer.

Bruckner. On Friday night Barenboim and the CSO took on Bruckner's 9th, preceding it with five of Pierre Boulez's Notations for orchestra (for large orchestra, inspired by but not transcriptions of piano works from the '40s). These were brilliantly done, every percussion instrument of the past two centuries employed, coloristic in the extreme, but at times (nos. III and IV) ready to burst into traditional rhythms (march, dance) but never quite doing so.

The Bruckner was very well played, with broad tempi, careful balancing of orchestral choirs, and an Old World blending of tone that one does not always associate with the Chicago orchestra. That said, unlike the previous night's Mahler, the performance seemed something less than the sum of its excellent parts: it lacked the sense of epic inevitability this symphony should convey. In fairness the Bruckner 9th is a surprisingly difficult work to bring off. If played for monumentality it can be boring; if for passion it can seem overwrought. Falling between the two, Barenboim did not quite bring it off despite many fine moments (the low brass in the opening paragraphs, the articulation of the massive climaxes in the Adagio). Indeed a Furtwängler-like fluidity seemed to break into the performance at times, and then the performance really came alive.

Both concerts received prolonged standing ovations, an expression of appreciation to the departing director, whose tenure has been controversial, but deserved for the Mahler (clearly fine-tuned after Jens' critique of the 2005 tour performance). Barenboim's farewell concerts concluded with the Beethoven 9th and Choral Fantasy on Saturday, not heard by this reviewer.

Matthias Maute and Modern Musick

Early Music Festival on Ionarts: Jens F. Laurson, Cavalli, "La Didone" (June 18) Charles T. Downey, Mozart, "Idomeneo" (June 4)

The theme of this summer's Washington Early Music Festival is the music of Italy. There have been several concerts, including two major operatic performances, over the past three weekends, but the festival truly gets under way this week with a series of performances all week long, both at noon and in the evening, at St. Mark's Episcopal Church here on Capitol Hill. We were there last night to hear local group Modern Musick give an all-Vivaldi program to kick things off. I have written before about St. Mark's, one of the loveliest churches in my neighborhood, with its Tiffany stained glass window (Christ Leaves the Praetorium, created in 1888, after an illustration by Gustave Doré).

The audience was of a respectable size, many of them drawn, most likely, by the name of recorder virtuoso Matthias Maute, who joined the group for two concerti as soloist. I heard him last year as a soloist, also on an all-Vivaldi program, with the REBEL Ensemble at the Library of Congress and was mightily impressed. After this concert, he remains the most talented recorder player I have heard live in recent years. His first concerto was an adaptation of a violin concerto (B-flat major, RV 375), which offered plenty of opportunities for Maute to show off his many skills. He can riff off incredible spirals of detached runs, almost all individually set off in astounding clarity, and immediately switch to soaring long high notes, impeccably tuned and unchanging, all with extraordinary breath control. He has great flair in ornamentation as well -- for example, in the second movement of this concerto -- which is crucial in Baroque music, and not all players are created equal in this respect. He was no less impressive in his second concerto (C minor, RV 441). Because it was actually composed for the recorder, its demands seemed to fit more naturally under Maute's fingers.

Other Reviews: Gail Wein, Washington Early Music Festival (Washington Post, June 21)

Modern Musick gave fine performances of two other concerti, as well, in their chamber-like arrangement (two violins, viola, cello, bass, harpsichord). The best selection was the C minor concerto for strings (RV 118), which showed the group's tendency toward a vivid rhythmic impulse to the best effect. John Moran played the solo part of the cello concerto (A minor, RV 420) with exciting gusto: difficult music on a difficult instrument. The ritornello of this piece's first movement (Andante) has an ear-pleasing double-violin effect, a sort of Venetian split, and the second movement (Adagio) is rousingly earthy. A sacred sonata ("al Santo Sepolcro," RV 130), which I also heard on another all-Vivaldi program last month, introduced a choral work, the Credo in E Minor, RV 591. The St. Mark's Chancel Choir made a good effort on the simple, mostly homophonic choral part (however, emphatically not, as Gail Wein put it in the Post in a rare moment of outrageous hyperbole, a sound that "rivaled the best professional choruses"), over a thrilling running continuo part and quick, buzzing violin accompaniment.

Get out your Ionarts workbooks. All fans of Baroque music and the recorder, in particular, are advised to go to St. Mark's this evening (June 20, 8 pm), when Matthias Maute will give a solo recital on recorder and traverso. The program includes Bach's Partita for Flute, Marais's variations on "La Follia," and an 18th-century transcription of Vivaldi's Spring Concerto for flute.

More Recent Choral Music

Available at Amazon: Various works, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus, Norman Mackenzie (released on February 28, 2006)

One of the things that distinguished the Robert Shaw Chorale was not only the exceptionally high quality of its singing but also, probably not unrelated, the fact that its singers were all paid professionals. For some reason, choral singing is still dominated by amateur musicians, and it was inevitable that the new incarnation of the RSC, created by Norman Mackenzie as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Orchestra, would be a group of 40 to 60 volunteers. They sound good on their latest CD, but not as good as the Robert Shaw Chorale.

This CD is bookended by two very different settings of the text for Corpus Christi (celebrated yesterday) by Thomas Aquinas, O sacrum convivium, both sung by a reduced group with five or six singers per part. That by Olivier Messiaen is one of his most famous pieces, sung by many choruses, often badly. Its complicated harmonies are extremely difficult to tune well, and the ASOCC does a fairly good job. The Thomas Tallis setting is much less extraordinary, although there are a few interesting cross-relations to navigate. The sound of this disc is warm, capturing the choir in the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta with some of the rich clothing of the space. The Messiaen is paired with John Tavener's Song for Athene, a funeral motet that was famously performed at the memorial service for Diana Windsor. It receives a lovely performance here, somber and mournful, but with an exultant final section ("Come, enjoy rewards and crowns I have prepared for you") with the sort of loud singing that volunteer choruses excel at.

The meat of the recording comes with two sets of motets, the Quatre motets sur des thèmes grégoriens, op. 10, by Maurice Duruflé, and Aaron Copland's Four Motets, op. 20. Any church singer worth his salt has sung the Duruflé pieces, probably quite often, and the ASOCC comes close to getting the right simplicity in its performance, although with some intonation problems, especially in the Tantum ergo. Duruflé's greatest achievement was to have created the best manner of setting chant melodies in modern harmonic textures, Gerald Near being a close contender for the title. The Copland motets are far less familiar, and while Duruflé wrote his four motets near the end of his life, the Copland pieces are juvenilia, composed as exercises for Nadia Boulanger. The performance here is much less polished. Finally, the Mass in G Minor by Ralph Vaughan Williams, while lovely (especially the Dona nobis pacem), hardly needs another recording at this point, and this performance does little to distinguish itself from the pack. In fact, the solo sections (as in the Christe eleison) are sometimes a drawback. Any church would be happy to have a group like the ASOCC performing in their chancel every Sunday, but as far as listening to this recording regularly at home, it is just not that extraordinary.

Various works, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Hila Plitmann, Nancy Maultsby, Robert Spano (released on October 25, 2005)

Of greater interest is the live recording, released last fall, of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus premiering two recent choral works (mixed together from concerts on May 14 and 15, 2005). This recording would be worthier still if the new pieces were truly significant, "destined to become important additions to the choral repertoire" in the words of the liner notes. Neither piece thrilled me all that much after a second and third listening, and neither seemed to have a created a need in my ear for more hearing. The performances are no more extraordinary.

Composer Christopher Theofanidis (b. 1967) drew the texts for his The Here and Now from the ecstatic poetry of the 13th-century Turkish philosopher Jelaluddin Rumi, in an English translation by Coleman Barks. The work, commissioned by Robert Spano for the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, grabbed me at first, with its insistent homophonic swells and iterations, especially in the frenetic first movement, Inside this new love, die ("Take an axe to the prison wall! Escape! Do it now!"). Over the course of its half-hour duration, however, the sameness of style wore thin. The chorus, often in homophonically united chords of greater or lesser dissonance, pronounces its text in speech-like Brittenesque rhythms ("half-heartedness" is not a word that lends itself easily to singing, for example). Three brief solos by baritone Brett Polegato and the penultimate duet with soprano Hila Plitmann and tenor Richard Clement do little to relieve the monochromatic nature of the piece. The final movement begins with the kitschy shout of Polegato ("His laughter was his freedom, and his gift to the eternal!") and only gets sillier after that, sounding like a Hollywood-style work appropriate to the opening ceremonies of an Olympiad.

Leonard Bernstein is one of those composers who knew his musical voice very early on, and the Lamentation movement from his "Jeremiah" Symphony, submitted for a student composition contest during the World War II years, is recognizably Bernstein. The glistening jazzy chords, the wind dyads, and the sensitive orchestration with soaring violin lines all make this enjoyable listening. In particular, the lengthy instrumental portions of this movement sound great. Mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby has enough heft in the Hebrew text, but perhaps too much vibrato and not enough cleanness at the ends of lines.

Pulitzer Prize winner David Del Tredici (b. 1937) is up to his usual neo-Romantic tricks in his new work, a setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Paul Revere's Ride. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Del Tredici was overtaken by a fit of patriotism: in the liner notes, he writes, "Flags also appeared in many windows, including my own, and I saw that it angered me to see windows without flags." All of the bombast one would expect from that sentiment can be found here, and then some. There is a musical battle between "Rule, Britannia" and "Yankee Doodle" in the fugue section, a siren that wails at several points, and every imaginable cliché used in settings for military choruses, for example. No doubt about it, Del Tredici loves the Red, White, and Blue, and he calls it macaroni. Fortunately for the listener, over about the same length as The Here and Now, the veteran Del Tredici gives us much greater diversity of sound and texture. The symphony and chorus are clearly having fun with the work and do a bang-up job, although soprano Hila Plitmann, miked closely to give her a chance against the orchestra, still sounds slightly pinched on some of the very high writing. This is a fun and wild ride, if not particularly musically nourishing. With the sounds of birds warbling (is that an instrumental effect or a taped sound?) in the postlude, ah, it's morning again in America.

UPDATE:
Although inclined to disagree with my review, after downloading Paul Revere's Ride, the Fredösphere now thinks that I got it right. Thanks for reading, Fred!