The 21st-Century Orchestra: Music from Brown University
Wang Lu (b. 1982)
Surge (2022)
Voices of the Orchard (2024)
Joseph Butch Rovan
Scattering (2022)
Anthony Cheung (b. 1982)
Volta (2022/24)
Eric Nathan (b. 1983)
In Between II (2023)
Boston Modern Orchestra/Gil Rose
rec. 2024, Brown University, USA
New Focus Recordings FCR464 [62]
Founded in 1996, the Boston Modern Orchestra and their director Gil Rose have done invaluable work in commissioning and performing contemporary works. Their extensive recordings catalogue covers music from Piston and Barber to, as this disc shows, works by young artists.
This discsurveys contemporary symphonic music – all the works were written in the last four years – through the ears of four composers on the music faculty at Brown University in Rhode Island. This is clear a thriving faculty free of dogma as all the composers write in very different styles.
Composer and pianist Wang Lu studied at the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music and Columbia University and her music explores her Chinese heritage in a contemporary Western context. Her Surge which opens the disc is, she tells us, inspired by first hearing the New York Philharmonic in 2005 and thoughts of the Philadelphia Orchestra in China in 1973. It begins with a drum roll and rather jazzy trumpet solo. What then follows is what sounds like a collage work of fragmentary solos and theatrical gestures. It is quite entertaining but not what I was expecting from her notes.
Her second work, Voices of the Orchard, is a ten-minute orchestral suite adapted from her 2022 chamber opera The Beekeeper which “explored how a piece of land can hold on to stories, both human and animal alike”. It is a gently theatrical work that sounded more balletic than operatic. There is colourful writing for the ensemble hinting at characters we cannot see. It is an enjoyable work which has left me wanting to see/hear the original.
Butch Rovan is a composer, performer, media artist, and instrument designer who has worked at Brown since 2004. He designs electronic hardware and wireless systems for use in musical performance. Among his most recent projects are the TOSHI, (The Orchestra-Synthesis Human Interface), a new conductor interface for orchestral synthesis.
TOSHI features in his work Scattering, recorded here. This intriguingly involves a controller worn on the wrist of the conductor that triggers electronic sounds based on the conductor’s hand movements. The excellent liner notes show an example of the notation for the conductor’s hands. Scattering, his notes tell us, was inspired by William Meredith’s poem “Examples of Created Systems”, the Covid-19 pandemic and George Floyd’s death; this led him to consider the nature of interconnected systems.
I am not sure that I heard any of this in the music or if that is even possible. What we have is a mostly bright, toccata type movement of about fifteen minutes, mainly for acoustic instruments whose sounds are sometimes picked up by TOSHI and transformed. I think in a live performance this probably has some spatial effect in the hall; this simply does not come across on the disc. There are some sparky electronic sounds, some growly sounds and some breathy sounds which put me in mind of Tippett’s Symphony No 4. I could not really connect them to the acoustic music nor the inspirations for the work. That said, it is colourfully intriguing.
Anthony Cheung studied at Harvard and Columbia, and his main teachers were Bernard Rands and Tristan Murail. He has received many awards including a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Charles Ives Fellowship and Scholarship) and in 2012 a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome.
His work Volta refers not, as I had hoped, to the vigorous dance much favoured by Elizabeth 1, but to “a poetry technique wherein the meaning of a poem suddenly pivots, transforming meaning”. Cheung’s piece is compositionally the most traditional work on the disc. And apart from the poetic title there are no extramural ideas tacked onto the music. There are, as one might expect, a number of rapid changes of mood and texture as the work continues and about mid-way through it becomes more introspective. It is all very atmospheric, leaving a lingering feeling of something disturbing. The many solos sound excellently played by the orchestra and Mr Rose manages the hairpin turns effectively.
Eric Nathan studied at Yale, Indiana and Cornell university’s where his teachers included Claude Baker, Sven-David Sandström and Steven Stucky. Like Dr Cheung, he has received many awards including a Rome Prize and a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship. He seems to have received numerous high-profile commissions, and it is surprising that little of his music has been recorded.
In Between II transforms an earlier work for ensemble into one for full orchestra. On YouTube one can find live performances of both versions of the work. It was inspired by a memory that the composer had of standing in a forest near his house and observing the trees and presumably listening to the wind. The work begins with the orchestra making noises of and wind blowing and leaves rustling. On the video, one can see the conductor at this point making sweeping directional gestures with his hands. The liner notes show examples of the notation for his hands. I think the concept was probably more interesting than the execution.
The work continues in a mainly fragmented textural way. There are pops and squeaks interspersed amongst sustained chords passed between different orchestral groupings. Halfway through, a big brass chorale appears and the textures coalesce around a vigorous dancelike figure for the whole orchestra. This leads to a tremendous stormy climax, after which the nature sounds of the opening return to close the work quietly. It is a pleasantly atmospheric work, but I rather prefer composers to create a natural world though music rather than imitate it in breaths and rustles. I am not advocating for rehashed Dvorak or Tchaikovsky or even Janáček, but the 21st century composer’s palette is far richer than shown here.
All in all, this is an interesting disc. It shows composers in a certain place and time feeling their way through a Western orchestra. Whether their ideas will follow through or fall by the wayside like much post war academic music when the god of serialism had to be worshiped remains to be seen. Whatever happens I am glad to have heard them trying.
Paul RW Jackson
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