CLASSICAL
William Bolcom
© 2006 Katryn Conlin for VocalEssence
The Pulitzer Prize winner and University of Michigan professor is one of America's most compelling composers. His alluring, eclectic music pulsates with vernacular from ragtime to rock but -- unlike many of today's banal neo-romantics and purveyors of pastiche -- he doesn't shy away from prickly modernism either.
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bolcom champion Dennis Russell Davies, performed his gloriously gnarly Seventh Symphony: A Symphonic Concerto (2002). Last month, Dawn Upshaw sang three of Bolcom's wry "Cabaret Songs" for the Chamber Music Society of Detroit. A few weeks later a new recording of seven of the songs sung by Measha Brueggergosman arrived on Deutsche Grammophon.
Washington National Opera revives Bolcom's 1999 masterpiece "A View From the Bridge" next month. The Boston Symphony premieres his Symphony No. 8 in early 2008. Back home, the Guarneri and Johannes string quartets premiere his "Octet" in February in Ann Arbor, and in June the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival tips its cap in honor of the composer's 70th birthday in 2008.
You need a BlackBerry to keep it all straight.
The Seventh Symphony, written for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, is full of testy, virtuoso passages that would challenge any orchestra on earth. Bolcom conceived it as an opera without words, a grand instrumental drama. The 35-minute piece explodes with color and energy, unfolding in three acts but four movements; the third movement, a soulful lamentation, functions as a bridge similar to the orchestral interlude in "Madama Butterfly."
The major protagonists -- solo clarinet, trombone, cello and bass -- open the music in a state of nervous lyricism. The mood swings are wild, with crunchy tone clusters and percussive thwacks giving way to leaping sprints of athletic melody and even a big tune like one in the horns.
Bolcom's language, however, remains largely abstract, though the syncopated xylophone and percussionists' wire brushes in the second movement hint at jazz. The elegiac third movement avoids cliches such as massed strings in favor of overlapping dialogue and weeping two-note figures, first played by solo bassoon, that recall the opening of Brahms' Fourth Symphony.
Davies led a deftly balanced, rhythmically secure and charismatic performance Friday. The DSO soloists were all aces, though a few blown ensemble entrances and tentative passages suggested the orchestra was still feeling its way. The piece and the composer were greeted with a rousing ovation, a reminder that new music imaginatively composed and brilliantly played will find an audience.
Before intermission, violinist Renaud Capuçon gave a ravishing account of Camille Saint-Saens' Violin Concerto No. 1 and "Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso." Capuçon's dark sound glowed warmly and the bravura passages were all the more effective for his refusal to preen. He answered the stampede cheers with an encore, Gluck's "Dance of the Blessed Spirits."
The "Leonore Overture No. 3" by Beethoven was the only dud. Davies' deliberate tempos and meticulously hushed dynamics aimed for profundity, but sounded heavy, tense and the orchestra chomped at the bit. Principal flutist Ervin Monroe's key passages were less supple than they needed to be.
Still, the concerto and symphony made news, and, best of all, there may be more Bolcom on the way. Newly appointed DSO music director Leonard Slatkin is a longtime advocate, though if Slatkin wants Bolcom to write something for his new orchestra he may have to stand in line.
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© Copyright 2007, DETROIT FREE PRESS
