Bass steel drums in the orchestra seating, a jazz band in the mezzanine, shrieking piccolos high in the second tier, and fantastic growls from a massive pipe organ. American spatial music composer Henry Brant's Pulitzer-winning Ice Field: Spatial Narratives for Large and Small Orchestral Groups is returning to Davies Hall, where its world premiere took place 13 years ago.
Once again, MTT will lead the performances, on Sept. 18-21; the program also features Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. A special invitation has gone out to Other Minds, the organization commissioning the work, which has been performed only once.
Composed specifically for the architectural configuration of Davies Hall, what SFS calls a "polystylistic musical blowout" certainly cannot be appreciated from a recording, so to satisfy curiosity, presence in Davies Hall is required.
Brant (1913-2008) played the organ at the premiere, this time Cameron Carpenter will be in charge of the 8,264-pipe Ruffatti concert organ. Brantt said of his work:
I had come to feel that single-style music, no matter how experimental or full of variety, could no longer evoke the new stresses, layered insanities, and multi-directional assaults of contemporary life on the spirit. [Spatial music would] speak more expressively of the human predicament.
As a witness to the 2001 performance, I wonder if the work will make a different impression this time. Back then, unfortunately, it was an emphatic thumbs down:
Entertaining at best, the composition's only distinction was being one of the most pointless and frustrating concert experiences in my memory. On the plus side, this musical "curiosity," performed by 120 musicians scattered around the huge hall, benefitted from Michael Tilson Thomas' passionate advocacy and Brant's own organ virtuoso, however off his beat might have been as MTT waved his arms frantically, Brant never looking in the conductor's direction.