REVIEW: When the World as You've Known It Doesn't Exist
Above: Photo by Chris Lee.
February 21, 2020
By Brian Taylor
The 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Music was awarded to composer Ellen Reid for her opera p r i s m. The 36-year-old composer who describes herself as a “sound artist” began tackling the piece about sexual assault before the #MeToo movement emerged. I was eager to hear her newest work, presented as part of the New York Philharmonic’s Project 19, an initiative to commission and premiere 19 new pieces by female composers in honor of the 100th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage.
I haven’t had the opportunity to hear p r i s m. But after being introduced to Reid’s talent with When the World as You’ve Known It Doesn’t Exist, I want to. She has her finger on the pulse of the times. Introducing the piece in David Geffen Hall before its world premiere, she explained the title, asking the audience if anyone else might have felt that way recently, too. The audience groaned in empathy.
When the World as You’ve Known It Doesn’t Exist, cleverly orchestrated throughout, begins with a melting, sliding texture. The air is apocalyptic. Gradual thematic fragments hint that something sinister holds sway. Three sopranos (Eliza Bagg, Martha Cluver and Estelí Gomez) enhance the large orchestra, functioning as the voice of the innocents, the pure, peering out, as if sequestered in cages.
Reid unapologetically incorporates tropes from Hollywood film scoring, from an exotic flute solo employing non-western techniques, to soaring strings that land on quickly digestible melodic hooks. She excels at whistling, wind-like effects — and several varieties of ominous. The piece ends as it began, melting and disintegrating. Reid’s tone poem is impressively constructed, unmistakably fretful and distraught — and perhaps, cautiously hopeful.
Photo by Chris Lee.
Reneé Fleming joined the Philharmonic for a selection of works featured on her recent album Distant Light (Decca). The poetry of Mark Strand explodes on the stage as set by Swedish composer Anders Hillborg in two songs from The Strand Settings. ‘Dark Harbor XXXV’ opens with eddies of woodwind lines reminiscent of birdsong. The widely varied texture does not dwell on naturescape, though; jazzy effects such as harmon mutes hint at urban hustle-and-bustle. The text is cryptic, and delivered with expressionistic stylization by Fleming: “The sickness of angels is nothing new / I have seen them crawling like bees,” the final S in ‘sickness’ given an extra hiss, the Z of bees given humorous buzz, as if reading a storybook to children.
‘Dark Harbor XI,’ recalls the nostalgia Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Fleming sounds glorious in these pieces, which were tailored to her creamy soprano. Occasionally the thick orchestration threatens to bury the vocal line, but subtle amplification prevented this.
The evening then veered toward pops concert, with a pair of art-pop songs by Icelandic recording artist Björk, orchestrated by Hans Ek. The first, ‘Virus,’ is a sweetly perverse love song built on a metaphor comparing love to the relationship between host and contagion. Given the Wuhan coronavirus in the news lately, the coincidence required Fleming to graciously precede the performance with well-wishes for its victims.
The second song, ‘All Is Full of Love,” is uplifting, and its rising vocal lines are a good fit for Fleming’s post-opera vocal persona. Ek’s orchestrations effectively transport Björk’s delicate soundscapes to the concert hall, but the percussion section overplayed, with the clanging of bells and other filigree overpowering the texture. Van Zweden conducted with driving urgency, where Björk’s recordings are languorous and meditative.
The second half of the program consisted of Anton Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, the “Romantic.” It seemed like odd programming on the face of it. But, perhaps, the epic planes of texture in Bruckner’s symphony balanced the ennui of Reid’s tone poem. The piece, which showcases the brass section, especially the horns, was energized and finely wrought. Bruckner pulls out all the stops and pounds away.
The best moment is the so-called ‘Hunt’ Scherzo — with horn fanfares that might have inspired John Williams’s theme for Superman. The other three movements impress the ear, but lack emotional impact.
***
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