
Augusta Read Thomas is a name I've seen many times, but until now, I'd never listened to any of her music. This disc contains eight diverse works, and one movement from another work, on one fairly brief disc. It seemed like a nice way to sample both her music specifically, and a bunch of works from this very century.
The disc opens with the nine minute
Radiant Circles. At times very bright, and purposely so, and loaded with hefty percussion, one can hear a lot of influences (Ligeti, Berio, Ruggles maybe, etc) but a personal voice. It's modern and not tuneful, and while dissonant, it's not harsh. Alas, the University of Illinois Orchestra does not sound as though it has the best string or brass or winds in the world, and at times it seems like the music is missing some impact. I have to think when Pierre Boulez led some of Ms Thomas' works in Chicago the results were more satisfactory. The second piece is the movement
Prayer-Star Dust Orbits from
Resounding Earth, for Percussion Quartet. There's a lot of bells ringing in this piece, which sounds intrinsically aleatoric and comes off as a sort of super wind chime for its nine minute duration. It's nice enough, but I don't see myself listening to it a whole lot.
Juggler of Day for women's chorus sets Emily Dickinson's brief text in a short six-and-a-half minute span. Each line is layered, with different parts singing over and around one another. It manages to marry hints of old style polyphonic delivery with contemporary voice blending, sort of like a 16th Century Spaniard and a modern Russian somehow mushed their music together. The light, bright, fun
Capricci for Flute and Clarinet follows, and really, it's a charming piece.
Twilight Butterfly, from 2013, for Mezzo and Piano is a fairly attractive song and sort of keeps with the feeling of the collection.
Then comes a doozy:
Bells Ring Summer for solo cello. Originally written for David Finckel, this short piece is a scorching, tight, taut work, until the last fifth or so. I would certainly like to hear how the dedicatee plays it.
Euterpe's Caprice, a two minute fanfare for solo flute (its actual title), is back to lighter fare, and sounds fun. This is followed by
Pulsar, for solo violin, which sounds as though it could be an extended cadenza for a violin concerto. Finally comes the closer, the title track,
Astral Canticle. A double concerto for flute and violin, the piece opens with the violin, moves via some overlap to the flute, and then blends in an instrument or two from the orchestra here or there, for a couple minutes before the brass enter. While a concerto for the two main instruments, there's also a concerto for orchestra sound to it, as other sections move in and out of the picture, gradually building to a tutti as the piece draws to a close. The piece manages to be both unabashedly contemporary yet entirely approachable. Again, though, one wonders what A-listers might deliver. Daniel Barenboim conducted the Chicagoans in the first performance. I'd have to think the full impact of the piece could be heard with those forces.
The disc is a success overall, but the takeaway for me is that I want to hear the big works played by world class ensembles, and that solo cello piece needs to cycle into the solo repertoire.