Corigliano: Symphony No 2, Mannheim Rocket /Storgards, Helsinki Philharmonic

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REVIEWS:John Corigliano's Second Symphony won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize, not that most listeners will care or should care. It's an arrangement for string orchestra of...

REVIEWS:

John Corigliano's Second Symphony won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize, not that most listeners will care or should care. It's an arrangement for string orchestra of the 1996 String Quartet, a work in five-movement arch form similar to Bartók's Fourth Quartet, in which related pairs of movements balance on either side of a central "night music" fulcrum. As might be expected from a composer acknowledged for his brilliant orchestration, this arrangement is no mere transcription; instead it takes advantage of the full resources of the modern string orchestra and ranges stylistically from the exquisite melody that opens the final Postlude to the avant-garde atmospherics of the opening and central Night Music. This isn't easy music to take by any means, but it is extremely well written and consistently engaging in a dark and gloomy sort of way. The fourth movement, an intriguing lopsided fugue, is especially imaginative.

With The Mannheim Rocket we're on more familiar ground, and the sparks really fly. This "collage" piece takes us on an orchestral ride through musical history, with references to a multitude of famous German composers, including Mozart and Wagner, all seamlessly integrated into a highly colored orchestral fabric. It's great fun and it comes as something of a relief after the intensity of the Second Symphony. A great deal of that intensity comes from the excellent performances by the Helsinki Philharmonic under John Storgards. Although this orchestra is not well-known for its string section, recent recordings under Segerstam (Sibelius) and now this new one reveal an amazing richness and body to the sound, to say nothing of virtuosity in what must be very difficult music. Ondine's sonics do the musicians proud as well, being exceptionally lifelike and offering a drop-dead silent backdrop to the Symphony's frequent moments of extreme quietude. Challenging music, perhaps, but a challenge met with complete confidence and success.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

John Corigliano has enjoyed one of the most successful careers of any American composer of his generation. Now in his mid sixties, he began more than 40 years ago as a talented scion of the Barber-Bernstein axis, producing works characterized by ingratiating showmanship and lyrical warmth. But that was during the 1960s, when accessible lyricism could relegate one to the American aesthetic equivalent of Siberia. Not temperamentally suited to an impoverished life spent beating his head against the wall in the name of artistic “truth,” Corigliano assessed the musical climate and calculated how he might turn his talents to profitable use. What he arrived at during the mid 1970s was an unabashed eclecticism: rather than renounce the neo-Romanticism that was his birthright, he surrounded it with virtually every new compositional “ism,” including extended instrumental usages, aleatoric techniques, atonality, exotic multiculturalism, quotations from earlier music, surrealistic soundscapes of the sort associated with György Ligeti and Jacob Druckman, and, later, touches of minimalism. This placed him within the movement Druckman termed “The New Romanticism,” referring to those composers who felt that the innovative techniques that emerged after WW II needed to be placed in the service of poetic or expressive aesthetic objectives. While the term “New Romanticism” never really took hold, the approach itself has proven to be one of the more fruitful compositional movements of the late 20th century, and includes most of those figures who are neither die-hard serialists, die-hard traditionalists, minimalists, or explorers of the more recent postmodern tributaries. It is probably safe to say that Corigliano stands today as the most celebrated exponent of this approach, having earned the most prestigious awards and commissions available to the American composer, even including an Academy Award for his soundtrack to the film The Red Violin.

Initially, Corigliano’s work in this vein was characterized by a sort of manic “kitchen-sinkism,” with incongruous elements of all kinds thrown together to produce dazzling entertainment spectacles that flattered the audience’s desire to appreciate “new music” relatively painlessly. But during the course of the past 30 years or so, he has matured as a creative artist, and seems in his recent major works to be aiming toward deeper levels of expression. This is not to suggest that Corigliano has joined those composers for whom music is a revelation of one’s “inner heart and soul”; rather, he is one of those who prefer to present a “show,” and probably always will be. But some of his recent “shows” have been more serious in their aesthetic content.

These reflections are prompted by this remarkable new release: a Finnish production devoted to first recordings of two of Corigliano’s most recent compositions, in performances by the Helsinki Philharmonic, conducted by John Storgårds, who has been active throughout Scandinavia as a violinist as well as conductor. As I listened to these two pieces, the Symphony No. 2 (2000) and The Mannheim Rocket (2001), it occurred to me that Corigliano’s approach has moved toward that pursued by Dominick Argento, who uses music to develop “concepts” rather than to bare his “heart and soul.” In fact, although it is a third again as long, Corigliano’s Symphony No. 2 is remarkably similar in impact to Argento’s In Praise of Music (1977). Both works are designed to illustrate intriguing concepts, both fulfill them with remarkable ingenuity and in a way that is clearly perceptible to the attentive listener, while both produce a sense of satisfaction that is more intellectual—though aesthetic—than visceral.

Corigliano’s Symphony No. 2, winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize, was first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Seiji Ozawa. Comprising five substantial movements lasting some 45 minutes, it is a revision and adaptation for string orchestra of his 1996 String Quartet. The first movement begins in near inaudibility, as disparate threads of sound eerily coalesce into cluster textures, then achieve a sense of concord, before gradually dwindling away. The second movement is a dissonant scherzo in which wild, slashing gestures surround a “trio” passage of gentle serenity. The third movement, a mysterious and terrifying nocturne inspired by a night in Morocco, is the lengthiest and most impressive movement of the work. This is followed by a most unlikely fugue, relatively active, but not contrapuntal in the conventional sense, and quite dissonant. It, too, achieves repose in a central oasis. The final movement begins darkly, with some microtonal textures, and builds to a climax of intense severity before subsiding into mystery, ending the symphony as it began.

Despite the evocativeness of the concepts on which the work is based and the imaginativeness of the musical treatment, the symphony is quite demanding of the listener, largely because of the long duration and slow rate of activity of each movement and the nearly complete absence of tonal melodic contours and regular rhythmic pulse. In fact, knowing the way Corigliano offers his work in multiple packagings, I suspect that at least some of these movements—especially the central Nocturne—will be authorized for individual performance. Indeed, they may be more effective in such short doses than joined together in full-length form.

Corigliano composed The Mannheim Rocket for the National Theater Orchestra of Mannheim. The title refers to the familiar device developed by the early symphonic composers who flourished in Mannheim, Germany, during the 18th century, whereby a movement is launched by a theme in rapid ascent (e.g., the fourth movement of Mozart’s 40th Symphony). However, Corigliano joins this musical meaning with a more literal, yet fanciful, concept, suggesting a space vehicle gradually ascending through musical history until it reaches a timeless ether before making its inevitable descent. Corigliano fulfills this intriguing notion through an ingenious application of evocative imagery combined with the cleverest and most effective use of quotation-collage I can recall having heard. The result suggests such pieces as Honegger’s Pacific 231 and Villa-Lobos’s Little Train of the Caipira, but in 2001 style. The listener who takes the trouble to understand and follow the program as it plays out will be rewarded by a brilliant 10-minute tour-de-force of pictorial orchestral imagery. Both works are performed with the astounding proficiency and polish we have come to expect from the major—and some of the minor—Finnish orchestras. The sound quality of the recording is notably superb

--Walter Simmons, Fanfare



Product Description:


  • Release Date: May 25, 2004


  • UPC: 761195103920


  • Catalog Number: ODE 1039-2


  • Label: Ondine


  • Number of Discs: 1


  • Composer: John Corigliano


  • Conductor: John Storgårds


  • Orchestra/Ensemble: Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra


  • Performer: Storgards, Helsinki Po