In 2019, 2022 and again this year, the Orchestra of St Luke’s has opened its hall (as well as its orchestra) to select emerging composers through its DeGaetano Composition Institute. Composers develop their music over months of long distance meeting with resident composer Anna Clyne (in her final year with the institute) and then spend a week in New York City working with Clyne and the large orchestra.
The three compositions to emerge from this year’s institute were all inspired by works of living poets, but none used text or vocals, and each clocked in at a brief 10-15 minutes. The OSL also solved the problem of getting a second performance by playing the whole of the program twice, with just a short interval between the two halves.
Tommy Dougherty’s Impro-Vice started with harp violin jabs, then swirling glissandi, bells and timpani, thumbed cello strings and an air of cinematic suspense. The scene quickly changed to held, resonant tones, and the throughline grew hard to track, at least if received as a narrative flow, which the Psycho shower scene opening certainly seemed to suggest. Instead, it started to seem an exercise in orchestration. The orchestration was quite well done, but without so much as a movement break to allow the listener to gather their senses.
Carlos Bandera started his musical career in a post-hardcore metal band which could explain the dark impressionism, like sheets of rain, in the opening minutes of his When There Was Time, They Were Gone. Heightened tension gave way to a very gradual tonality, not quite a motif, emerging from the reeds. The strings receded and a soft mallet cymbal wash was unearthed below. It was there, five or six minutes in, that it became animated: abrupt figures from the two bass viols against little flute birdsongs. It dawns on me that I might be trying too hard to ‘see’ the music, but here it seemed clear: the rain has passed and a forest floor of activity has been revealed.
The third piece, Molly Herron’s Spin, Span, Spun, wasn’t about a scene. It was about the symphony – spatial, textural, warm and engaging, smart and joyful. The three quick movements followed the traditional fast, slow, fast division, with the slow movement unexpectedly ominous. The third rather Romantic movement was almost heroic, in a three-count, like a fairly frenetic waltz.
It can be a pleasure to hear an unfamiliar piece twice in the same program (or, rather, it can enhance the pleasure provided any is there). But this program of three premieres repeated allowed the further opportunity to hear the pieces before and after the composers’ explanations of intentions. Composers like to say that their work is open to listener interpretation, but with this agenda, how could one not keep a scorecard? A chance to see if you got it right or wrong, since not picturing sound can be a struggle.
Dougherty’s piece was about overcoming struggle and eventually accepting our “imperfect galaxy”. Indeed, quite linear, I’ll give myself the point. Bandera’s piece was meant to portray the interconnectedness of the world, zooming in and out of micro and macro activity. Again, I’ll take a point. Herron’s wasn’t so narrative but was built around her fascination with Baroque string trills and her love for Haydn and Vivaldi. More about process than narrative. I grant myself a perfect score and, of course, in so doing, give the composers (and their mentor) points for impressions successfully delivered.
