Rainbow Body

I'm writing this for those who, like me, don't really enjoy much classical music you've heard that was written in the last 50 years or so. I'm encouraged to hear these new compositions by Theofandis and Higdon, both of which are engaging from beginning to end and stand up in quality alongside the Barber and Copland pieces. I encourage anybody who wants to find some newer music to enjoy to give this disc a chance. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

On the other hand, Barber's First Symphony has been well served on disc; there have been fine recordings from the likes of Leonard Slatkin, David Zinman, and Marin Alsop. If Spano and Atlanta have nothing especially new to add, theirs is a handsome performance full of the tragic drama that has commended this work to listeners since it was written.

But many will come to this disc for the new music primarily. Be assured it doesn't sound out of place in such august company. Christopher Theofanidis's "Rainbow Body" takes as its point of departure a piece by the medieval mystic and composer Hildegard von Bingen. The melody is fragmented, then put back together in music that builds to an intense pitch. "Rainbow Body" sometimes sounds like Hovhaness, but that is mostly a matter of a similar reliance on a modal melody and strangely similar orchestral garb in which the melody is clothed at each of its appearances. Otherwise, this muscular and direct music is unlike the usual, well, noodling that Hovhaness is too often guilty of.

Similarly, "Blue Cathedral," written as a tribute to the deceased younger brother of composer Jennifer Higdon, is a work with a "high concept." Higdon tried to suggest what it would be like to enter a transparent cathedral among the clouds, and she conveys the imagined feeling of awe and celebration in a work that doubles as a marvelous mini-concerto for orchestra. Flute and clarinet have prominent solos; the extramusical reference is to the instruments that she and her brother play or played. If Theofanidis's music has an American sensibility about it--recalling not only Hovhaness but perhaps more "athletic" composers such as William Schuman and Peter Mennin (and inescapably, I guess, minimalists or minimalist fellow-travelers such as John Adams and especially Michael Torke)--Higdon's work is less immediately American sounding, more cosmopolitan. Maybe there is some small influence of the tintinabular style of Arvo Part and others, but again fortunately, for me at least, "Blue Cathedral" has much more momentum than Part usually has. Perhaps that is the American element in the work, a quiet impatience to just get on with things that dogs even this largely contemplative, ecstatic music.

Anyway, both compositions are fine additions to the orchestral repertory. And both seem to have the perfect advocates in Spano and in his orchestra. Having lived with the Atlanta Symphony for the last seventeen years, I am happy to have heard it grow into a body that can be trusted to do full justice to important music like that on this CD. Telarc's sound is superb, even by its usually excellent Atlanta standards. How wonderful to hear every element of the music emerge with utter fidelity and clarity, yet in a fully natural ambience.