(Almost) Mostly Symphonies 43.

Grant Chu Covell

[May 2025.]

Veteran readers notice gaps in our coverage. We can’t discuss everything. So how can you tell if an omission is accidental or intentional? I recently reacquainted myself with a nearby institution’s efforts which prompted remarks on an assortment that had escaped timely notice. There’s something for everyone on BMOP/sound (bmop.org), Gil Rose and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s own recording label. Founded in 1996, BMOP has become a force, consistently championing the widest variety of predominantly American contemporary music. Supposing that late is better than never, let’s agree that fleeting coverage is an improvement over naught.

Quite literally, Schoenberg meets the Road Runner on BMOP/sound 1078. John Adams relates that he was examining Op. 9 while his son was watching cartoons in the next room. Hard to square the 1992 Chamber Symphony or the 2007 Son of Chamber Symphony’s meshed frenetic rhythms with 1979’s Common Tone in Simple Time’s regal smoothness. Maybe the relationship is simpler: Vacuum pack Common Tone’s Sibelius-like passages and you might get a few beats of a chamber symphony. Both periods are expertly orchestrated, and it’s a kick to hear them in proximity.

In a dusty cabinet we might find Gail Kubik’s easygoing (but not simple) scores. Divertimento No. 1 (1959) and 2 (1958) offer terse movements with breezy neoclassical gestures familiar to the Copland fan but readied for scoring cartoons. Indeed, Gerald McBoing Boing (1950), was written for the eponymous film based on a Dr. Seuss story, with narrator and percussionist (Frank Kelley and Robert Schulz). I swear there’s a percussion lick which Varèse lifted for his 1958 Poème électronique. The Symphony Concertante (1952) with solo trumpet, viola and piano (Terry Everson, Jing Peng and Vivian Choi) won Kubik the 1952 Pulitzer Prize. It’s derived from his score to the 1949 film, C-Man. Quite likely one of the best releases with BMOP’s name on it.

BMOP’s Samuel Barber program (BMOP/sound 1079) surprised me. Like many, I have Eleanor Sterber in my ear for Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947), but Kristen Watson stakes a fair claim. I had expected to lose interest in the complete score for the ballet Medea (1947) the same way I have trouble enduring Elliott Carter’s tonal ballets Pocahontas (1939) and The Minotaur (1947) (BMOP/sound 1077), but Barber took unexpected turns. Carter can be more intricate, but let’s admit it, he lacks Barber’s dramatic flair. A Hand of Bridge (1959, text by Menotti) for vocal quartet and chamber orchestra is a well-crafted miniature, a ten-minute one-act with four unhappy card players (Angela Gooch, Krista River, Matthew DiBattista and David Kravitz).

So much 20th- and 21st-century music wants to prove something. Robert Carl seems to want none of that. BMOP/sound 1076 collects four striking pieces, the largest being Symphony No. 5, “Land” (2013), which describes the world, but without cliches, which is hard to do. I found the theme and variations of the string orchestra Rocking Chair Serenade (2013) quite straightforward but absorbing. White Heron (2012) and What’s Underfoot (2016) demonstrate Carl’s technique of creating material from specific harmonic series.

Neuma 185 has grittier and more monochromatic work of this explorer: There are ten multi-tracked trombones in Updraft (2009) and five contrabasses in Night Garden (2013-14). Splectar (2023) and The Inevitable Wave (B) (2011-12) add electronics; two works titled Infinity Avenue (2015) are less successful.

Michael Colgrass (BMOP/sound 1064) offers incessant unexpectedness in Side by Side (2007), a concerto for a single keyboard player alternating between harpsichord and prepared piano (Joanne Kong). Yes, it’s not just a trick. Letter from Mozart (1976) and The Schubert Birds (1989) offer bits of their eponymous composers in intriguing, lively dialogs with history.

Janna Baty’s continual chatter sustains Lee Hoiby’s The Italian Lesson (1982) (BMOP/sound 1091), though perhaps Ruth Draper’s original monologue truly propels these 47 minutes. In Hoiby’s 1989 Bon Appétit!, Vanessa Schukis channels the unmatchable Julia Child creating a “choc’late” cake.

Soprano Courtenay Budd joins BMOP (BMOP/sound 1056) in David Del Tredici’s ebulliently tonal, colossal and sometimes garish Child Alice (1977-81). I don’t recall when I heard it last (probably just Part I, “In Memory of a Summer Day”), despite the numbing persistence of Simple Alice’s primary theme. However, this time through, the work’s melancholy made a deep impression.

What had seemed annoyingly repetitious might be an intentional discourse on memory and aging. Not just because the same words are set multiple times, and not just because the orchestra breaks the fourth wall when they count in Italian from one to “tredici.” (And also, not just because of the questionable relationship Lewis Carroll had with Alice Pleasance Liddell.) I now admire how Part I doesn’t end until after the intermission when Part II starts, and how the work nearly culminates in frenzy but instead ends unresolved.

BMOP/sound 1069 provides David Felder’s heady program-length Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux (2013-14). For solo alto and bass (Laura Aikin and Ethan Herschenfeld), orchestra and electronics, poems by René Daumal, Robert Creeley and Dana Gioia are spoken, sung and electronically transformed. What I love most is how the electronics burst through the orchestral texture (at the conclusion of III and VI, at X’s start, etc.), and how the sonic diversity never quite prepares for the simplicity of hearing Creeley and Gioia recite Buffalo Evening and Insomnia.

Further Felder: Coviello COV 91913 features violinist Irvine Arditti who elbows his way through Jeu de Tarot (2017), a seven-movement concerto. Felder’s string quartet Netivot (2016) (Arditti Quartet: Arditti, Ashot Sarkissjan, Ralf Ehlers and Lucas Fels) and the solo violin Another Face (1988) complete the release. Seven more cards appear in Jeu de Tarot 2 (2018-19) (Coviello COV 92415) with Arditti and Christian Baldini leading the Slee Sinfonietta. I find the first septet’s aggressive contrasts and microtonal inflections more engaging.

Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux was also recorded for Coviello with Brad Lubman conducting the Ensemble Signal, the Slee Sinfonietta, soprano Heather Buck and the same bass, Herschenfeld (Coviello COV 91916). But go for the BMOP/sound release instead.

Lukas Foss’ orchestral Night Music for John Lennon (1981) arranges immensely absorbing shapes, instances of aleatoric decisions made by conductor and players (BMOP/sound 1103). A brass quintet constitutes the core, among satisfying repetitions and balanced layers including a lilting piano tune. Similarly, the 1966 Cello Concert, originally for Rostropovich but David Russell here, creates contentment among asynchrony. Alternate versions of two movements are recorded so you may create your own version. The 1974 Concerto for Solo Percussion and Large or Small Orchestra (Robert Schulz) continues the deliberateness. Foss does not set out to prove anything, except that he creates interesting music.

A different, earlier Foss appears on BMOP/sound 1102. Introductions and Good-Byes (1959) is a teensy opera with a Menotti libretto. Subtitled “a 9-minute opera,” a host (Thomas Meglioranza) greets and dismisses party guests. The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1949) presents Mark Twain’s story with old-timey accents. These are tonal works with surprising agility and rhythmic panache.

Back in 2017, I noted BMOP/sound 1043 with Foss’ four varied symphonies.

Nancy Galbraith’s three concertos (BMOP/sound 1096) offer generous helpings of bright minimalism and energetic tonality. These pieces are rarely boring which is an infrequently achieved distinction. The 2019 Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (Lindsey Goodman) takes on Central and South American gestures, the 2016 Violin Concerto No. 1 (Alyssa Wang) comingles Baroque filigree with Glass, and Everything Flows, a 2019 percussion concerto (Abby Langhorst) combines sunny orchestral sweeps with every percussive sound imaginable.

Not just because I caught the reference to Vivaldi’s Juditha Triumphans and the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto, etc., I found Jeremy Gill’s Notturno Concertante (2014) for clarinet (Chris Grymes) and orchestra the most satisfactory item on BMOP/sound 1055. Clarinet and orchestra tussle more creatively they do in the Serenada Concertante (2013) for oboe (Erin Hannigan) and orchestra. With piano, vocal soloists and chorus (Ching-Yun Hu with the Marsh Chapel Choir), Before the Wresting Tides (2012) made a murky impression.

Sometimes I question BMOP’s insistence upon portrait discs. On Steven Mackey’s fourth release (BMOP/sound 1068) Urban Ocean (2013) warranted replay, whereas the 2005 percussion concerto Time Release (Colin Currie) felt lengthy, and the orchestral Tonic (2011) and Turn the Key (2006) could have used tightening.

Steven Stucky’s admiration for Lutosławski is readily apparent in the organically flowing Rhapsodies (2008) and his first Concerto for Orchestra (1987), but less so in the song cycle American Muse (1999) with baritone Sanford Sylvan (BMOP/sound 1050).

Perhaps because of its haunting subject, Paul Moravec’s The Blizzard Voices (2008) stuck with me (BMOP/sound 1054). Presented as an oratorio with texts by Ted Kooser and others, we hear about an unexpected snowstorm on January 12, 1888, which killed over 230 people in Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota. Remembrances and stories bring the “Schoolhouse Blizzard” into sharp focus. I hear the work for six vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra as a requiem.

On BMOP/sound 1097, The Overlook Hotel (2016) stands apart for its deliberate strangeness. The single movement Suite swirls together material from Moravec’s opera The Shining (2016). We hear ghostly music, a New Year’s Eve countdown, and impersonal dance tunes. These fifteen minutes are resolutely unsettling and more remarkable than the program’s remainder, Scorpio Dances (2019), Serenade (2004) and Brandenburg Gate (2008).

Despite similarities with a particular trio of Viennese composers, George Perle stands apart. The three five-movement Serenades on BMOP/sound 1067 are frisky and immediate. An invisible twenty-plus year jump separates Serenade No. 1 (1962) with viola soloist (Wenting Kang) from No. 3 (1983) with pianist (Donald Berman). Serenade No. 2 for Eleven Players (1968) coyly flirts with Schoenberg: imagine a cooler Chamber Concerto adding sax, piano and percussion, each movement a well-described miniature.

Bridge 9499 offers five premiere recordings but lacks BMOP’s snap. Cellist Jay Campbell makes rigorous sense of the 1966 Cello Concerto with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot. The Seattle folks do seem unsure whether Six Bagatelles (1965), Sinfonietta I (1987) and A Short Symphony (1980) ought to be expressive like Berg or acidic like Stravinsky; they are most comfortable in the 1986 Dance Fantasy.

Wayne Peterson’s 1985 Transformations’ barnstorming atonality, stands up well on BMOP/sound 1053. And the Winds Shall Blow (1994) is an energetic concertante work for saxophone quartet (Prism Quartet), winds and percussion. The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark (1990) brought Peterson the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. The jury had actually selected Ralph Shapey’s Concerto Fantastique (1991), but the Pulitzer board overruled their decision.

Long forgotten, unless you must labor through his textbooks, Walter Piston represents a well-polished facet of a forgotten age and style. BMOP/sound 1080’s retrospective provides the neat neo-classicism of the 1946 Divertimento and the 1933 Concerto for Orchestra. The latest pieces (Piston died in 1976) resist easy classification. The Variations on a Theme by Edward Burlingame Hill (1963) mutates another overlooked composer; the 1967 Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra (Michael Norsworthy), crisply trots out its material across four connected sections.