PROKOFIEV AND GANDOLFI

posted by James Reel

Here are two more reviews I wrote earlier this year for Fanfare ... one devoted to a 20th-century Russian, the other to a 21st-century American.

PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 5; Lieutenant Kijé Suite * Paavo Järvi, cond; Cincinnati SO * TELARC SACD 60683 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 64:25)

Paavo Järvi’s recording of Prokofiev’s Fifth reminds me of Leonard Slatkin’s recording of Elgar’s Enigma Variations: an essentially dark, somber view of music in which we’re accustomed to hearing more variety. Like Slatkin’s Elgar, Järvi’s Fifth is at least consistent and coherent and, indeed, valid, so it can’t be dismissed simply because we’ve come to expect more bite or more humor.

In the first movement, Järvi interprets the Andante marking as a leisurely walk, in the manner of Ormandy’s classic recording, instead of the brisk stroll we’ve been getting more recently, and rather than deflate the score, this tempo builds the music’s cumulative power. On the debit side, the second subject seems a bit impersonal. Järvi and the Telarc engineers maintain a very clear delineation of the orchestral sections, with the low brass being especially clear without being terribly heavy. At the same time, though, higher-pitched instruments, including trumpet and violins, seem reluctant to come forward in the mix, in ensemble passages as well as in woodwind and brass solos. This balance deepens the grayness of Järvi’s interpretation. All this holds true for the third movement as well. Järvi brings a brighter sound to the second and fourth movements, both benefiting from excellent clarity of articulation; the Scherzo truly scampers, despite the undercurrent of menace. A low-grade nervousness suffuses the final movement; the final section borders on the frantic and desperate, without turning shrill.

There’s less to report on the Kijé Suite; it gets a crisp, thumping performance, full of wit and flair, and not at all controversial. The performance of the Fifth, on the other hand, is strictly for people who can tolerate an anti-heroic approach to a work that is usually thought to be, at least in the end, celebratory. James Reel

GANDOLFI The Garden of Cosmic Speculation * Robert Spano, cond; Atlanta SO * TELARC SACD-60696 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 67:36)

The universe is expanding, and so is Michael Gandolfi’s The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. The work began in 2004 as a four-movement orchestral suite inspired by features of a unique “physics garden” in southern Scotland. Robert Spano’s performances of that with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra were so successful that the organization asked Gandolfi to make it bigger, and seven more movements had emerged by 2007. This now amounts to more than an hour of music, but Gandolfi suggests that performers may extract whatever sequences that make sense to them for public performance. Spano and his orchestra here present the complete score.

The original Garden of Cosmic Speculation was created in 1988 by architect Charles Jencks, as a sort of visual embodiment of the concepts of wave theory, sub-atomic particles, string theory and such. Involving sculpture and landscape architecture, it’s a cross between the English formal gardens of the past and the theoretical physics of today. The park is apparently opened to visitors only one day a year, but Jencks published a book about the property, which is what initially caught Gandolfi’s attention. (Preparing the expanded version of his suite, he visited the garden in person.)

Gandolfi is a faculty member of the New England Conservatory and the Tanglewood Music Center, but he’s not one of the high Modernists that his Boston cultural neighbor, James Levine, is so fond of. Gandolfi’s music is readily accessible (at least to anyone who enjoys the sort of composers Spano promotes, such as Jennifer Higdon and Osvaldo Golijov), and quite eclectic … sometimes, perhaps, too eclectic to allow the composer to establish his own profile.

That eclecticism is fully intentional in the movement “The Universal Cascade,” which in the course of six and a half minutes quotes 28 pieces, mostly pre-Baroque, but including Bach, Stravinsky and Miles Davis. This is followed by “The Garden of Senses Suite,” which quotes Bach themes and forms (a different Baroque dance style or chorale corresponds to each of the senses, including the sixth, intuition). There’s minimalist pulsation and vibration, like mid-period John Adams, in the work’s first movement, “The Zeroroom,” and he adopts a rather French aesthetic, but with American openness and sweep (and sometimes syncopation), in the hurtling scherzo “Symmetry Break Terrace/Black Hole Terrace.” The score as a whole can be dynamic and exciting, witty, at times wonderfully still, and always offers plenty of internal variety, with care for color and clarity, but on the basis of this one 67-minute work, I’m having trouble identifying Gandolfi’s own voice. Even so, I’d like to continue the effort by hearing more of his music.

Telarc’s surround sound is exactly what this score needs: clear, detailed and spatially precise. The Scottish park atmosphere is evoked at the beginning and end by birdsong emerging from all the speakers, but otherwise the balance maintains a normal concert hall perspective. James Reel