Missy Mazzoli (b. 1980)
Dark with Excessive Bright
Dark with Excessive Bright (Concerto for violin and string orchestra) (2021)
Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) (2013)
These Worlds in Us (2006)
Orpheus Undone (Behold the Machine, O Death; We of Violence, We Endure) (2021)
Vespers for Violin (with electronic soundtrack) (2014)
Dark with Excessive Bright (arr. for solo violin and string quintet) (2021)
Peter Herresthal (violin)
Bergen Philharmonic/James Gaffigan
Arctic Philharmonic/Tim Weiss
rec. 2021-22, Norway
BIS BIS-2572 SACD [66]
Missy Mazzoli has all the distinguishing laurels of an achieved and achieving composer. These include having been chosen as ‘2022 Composer of the Year’ by Musical America and being the first woman to receive a commission from the Metropolitan Opera; but there is much else. The music fascinates, but one is always aware that Mazzoli has no place for ingratiation or meeting the general listener half-way.
The five works on this disc are all comparatively recent and fairly brief. They include two versions of a 15-minute violin concerto; one with string orchestra, the other with string quintet, a symphony plus two other short works for orchestra and a piece called Vespers for solo violin and electronic soundtrack.
Violinist Peter Herresthal, who acts as instigator-in-chief in the two versions of the Concerto and in Vespers, has recorded some twenty concertos. Of late he has toured Kaija Saariaho’s concerto. His tone-production is rock-steady and his technique, which is of the highest, is bound to impress.
The concerto Dark with Excessive Bright emerges in two versions. It is a work that leaves the impression of minimalism while trailing traces of Armenian mysticism, Bergian susceptibility and Lark Ascending rapture. Herresthal’s way with this work prompts thoughts of Peter Sheppard Skaerved’s way with the music of George Rochberg and Mihailo Trandafilovski. There is distance and reverence here alongside a vein of dancing redemptive transcendent mystery. It’s also meditative with quicksilver shining among the Mazzoli’s long paragraphs.
The sound world of the Sinfonia for Orbiting Spheres for full orchestra evokes the complex gearing of an astrolabe in motion. It’s modern with a slick of Penderecki-like slaloming strings. There is not a raucous moment. Mazzoli seems to speak of a better world bathed in peace; an acrylic canvas where the hues melt and drift in harmony. In that sense it is redolent of Silvestrov’s Fifth Symphony.
These Worlds in Us is the earliest work here, dating from 2006. The course of the music tips and turns in what the composer tells us is a meditation on the wartime death of the father of the poet, James Tate. Mazzoli dedicated the score to her father who was a soldier in the Vietnam war. It has some of the constantly brimming, overtopped grief of the Barber Adagio.
Orpheus Undone is a Chicago commission and is in two parts, separately tracked. It’s the longest work here. Along the way we encounter an incessant probing pulse from the violins which are very much to the fore. The whole has a sort of groaning transcendental quality which reminds me a little of the melodic anchor-less soundworld of the Canadian composer, Marjan Mozetich. The second part highlights various distinctive sounds including the “twang” of a tensely suspended metal percussive instrument with a resonance that suggests a deeply rooted concrete foundation.
Vespers for solo violin and soundtrack momentarily recalls Alan Hovhaness in the oleaginous violin slides. Female voices are one of the accompanying strata. It all communicates a lack of surface tension and a sort of drifting weightlessness.
The English notes – which are also in German and French – are by the composer and are very personal. There’s also a discursive introduction by Garth Greenwell.
Rob Barnett
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