Jennifer Higdon’s On a Wire keeps the Atlanta Symphony’s ASO Media operations on a roll with yet another attractive release. Paired with a verbally awkward but sugar-chorded lovefest for chorus and orchestra by Michael Gandolfi, this CD demonstrates once more that new music does not have to be highly dissonant, complex, or pathbreaking to be worthy of attention.
Higdon’s piece is a total charmer — even more so in live performance, which I witnessed last year at the Cabrillo Music Festival in Santa Cruz. It’s essentially a concerto grosso with a gimmick. The ensemble of soloists (“eighth blackbird,” comprising clarinetist, flutist, violinist/violist, cellist, percussionist, and pianist), which alternates playing separately and with the orchestra, uses a prepared piano and plays it as a group from time to time. Surrounding the lidless instrument, the performers hit its metal strings with mallets and coax sound out of them with drawn catgut threaded around them. The piece opens with this eerie sound, the ensemble gathered around the piano as if trying to start a fire. Without these arresting visuals, the recording alone loses some of the effect, but the rasping opening noises soon morph into jaunty rhythms and instrumental scamperings that keep the music lively throughout the 25-plus minutes of the work.
Listen To The Music
Higdon - Bird on a Wire (excerpt)Gandolfi - Q.E.D.: Engaging Richard Feynman (excerpt)
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Contrasting passages of slower ensemble work include some warm melodic lines that would have been even more endearing if eighth blackbird’s string players had more perfect intonation and a bit more vibrato in this recording, but on the whole, their performance is outstanding. The music is further proof that Higdon is easily one of the top five American composers nowadays.
Gandolfi is a professor who doesn’t write like one. His music is tonal, reminiscent of eclectic sources (Vaughan Williams, Hovhaness, Barber, Ravel, Iceland’s Jón Leifs) and instantly appealing, though its repetitiveness may not bear extended acquaintance. In one section, for instance, the same basic melodic line and chord progression are iterated 11 times in the course of a minute. The upbeat milieu, overall, is a nice antidote for those who are tired of angst-ridden, “I’m ready to kill myself” slogs through despond that some composers are wont to explore — just relax and don’t worry about the words. You can’t hear them clearly most of the time, anyway, nice-sounding as the Atlanta Symphony Chorus is, conducted by Robert Spano.
If you care to delve, you’ll find that the piece (2010) is called Q.E.D.: Engaging Richard Feynman, in honor of the way the noted physicist conducted logical arguments. It includes what Gandolfi calls a “mashup” of texts from Gertrude Stein, Emily Dickinson, Joseph Campbell (the poet), Walt Whitman, and Siegfried Sassoon. Again, the words don’t really matter: All you need to know is that they’re life-affirming, along with the music — then you won’t be bothered by things like “bird” being set to two syllables.
Sit back and enjoy.