Fanfare reviews Mythologies and Mad Songs
"The music of Geoffrey Gordon has a dual axis: On one hand, it is immediate and visceral in impact; listen further, and there are myriad gifts below the surface. A good example of this is the first piece, PUCK (2017). There is a primal energy to much of the writing, married to a sense of unstoppable movement; the very first gesture could easily be construed as post-post-Mendelssohn in its fleetness, a Modernist whisp. The subtitle of PUCK is “fleeing from the dawn.” All becomes clear when one examines the front cover of the disc, a detail from an 1837 oil painting by David Scott that certainly focuses on the spirit’s darker side. Hecate, the triple goddess of the crossroads, is invoked in the Shakespeare quote that accompanies the score; a liminal goddess, her presence seems confirmed by the music’s inherent mystery. The performance here, by the BBC Scottish SO and Martyn Brabbins, is phenomenal. It seems completely in tune with Gordon’s score at all times, supported by an equally fine recording.
Quotations pepper the score of Mad Song for English horn and orchestra (2020). The generating poetry was William Blake’s poem of the same name, a reflection of Romantic poetical Angst. The English horn is clearly that poetical protagonist. Originally commissioned by the Antwerp Symphony, the premiere featured the current soloist, Dimitri Mestdag, who is as eloquent as they come. The piece is expertly composed, not least in the glide between first and second movement (“Lo to the vault of paved heaven”) and the subsequent change of territory to one of interior musings coupled with something of a sense of awe. This is the longest movement, and allows space for the creation of a dark world in which the soloist spins his thread. The quickening of incident for the finale (“Like a fiend in a cloud with howling woe”) ushers in a shimmering space, with the orchestra underpinning and illuminating the soloist’s line via the most imaginative and effective scoring. Never once in this performance does concentration drop; the placement of the soloist and orchestra within Orchid’s sound image is impeccable. And, with a final upward gesture, it’s over.
Written in 2019, ICE also comes with a quotation as a subtitle: “aut inveniam viam aut faciam” (I shall find a way or make a way). The quote is from the explorer Robert Peary (who is accorded the honor of having made the first successful journey to the North Pole, in 1909). This was Peary’s eighth attempt. And his success (he made it back, too) links him with fellow explorer Edward Shackleton (a journey to the Antarctic begun in 1907). Although Shackleton was just 97 miles short of his target, the two are linked by an unquenchable spirit of adventure. A sense of rawness here goes hand in hand with a spirit of optimism, with an overarching striving for the Beyond. There is another quotation here, by Shackleton: “We had seen God in His splendours, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.” The conjuring of an Arctic, icy world is superbly done by Gordon, and the BBC Scottish players react accordingly, with the music glinting in the sun. Gordon’s real achievement is to offer a prolongation of this frozen world for just a touch under 18 minutes. The work’s trajectory is gripping; the piece is not just about “frozen” sounds but also considers the awesome grandeur of Arctic and Antarctic landscapes.
Scored for bass clarinet and orchestra, and written in 2018, Prometheus once more has an external literary inspiration, but here it is dual: the Greek legend in the first instance, and Kafka’s take on that tale in the second. The performance heard here is that of the Royal Festival Hall premiere, and all congratulations are due to engineer Dave Rowell and producer Alexander Van Ingen for mastering the well-nigh insuperable Southbank acoustic. Commissioned by the Philharmonia and performed by them (the Minnesota Orchestra and the Malmö Symphony were both in on the act), this performance carries real documentary weight. Each movement title begins with “According to the ...” and then the number of the legend: the first, the legend of Prometheus’s continually renewed liver, eaten every day by eagles; the second, in which under the rain of beaks, Prometheus presses himself into the rock, until eventually rock and man become one; thirdly, all was forgotten over the course of thousands of years; and finally, everyone grew weary until the event becomes obliterated. One can perhaps hear the pecking in the shrill repeated notes of the brass in the second movement, against which the solo bass clarinet rails. Laurent Ben Slimane is a brilliant soloist; he seems to be as one with the Philharmonia, and the credit for that must surely go to Brabbins’ direction. The desolation of the “forgetting” movement is palpable; it also contains a long cadenza, an exposition of maximal virtuosity from Slimane. The finale, the longest movement, is a depiction of weariness but yet not of smooth entropy: the trajectory has jagged peaks and even (it strikes me) outbursts of panic.
This is a most remarkable disc from a composer who should have greater exposure. The standard of performance is stratospheric; the musical invention just as much so."
Recommended.
- Colin Clarke
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