Joshua Bell's The Elements anthologizes five great American composers

At first blush, it seems a curious idea to commission a piece with movements by five different composers. Every composer has their own style, and how could there be any overarching concept for the whole work? The Chicago Symphony Orchestra presented the local premiere of such a piece, The Elements, in a subscription concert June 13th. A new work for orchestra and solo violin masterminded by the superstar violinist Joshua Bell, shows that one way such a many-cooks piece can succeed is to line up composers of similar sensibilities, using similar forces. In this sense, it's only a step away from programming a concert. 

Bell savvily selected composers whose styles naturally mesh. One of the composer quinquevirate, Jessie Montgomery, said of The Elements, "It still flows as a piece. It's all American composers, and I think there is a sort of American aesthetic." She declined to elaborate, but the movements of The Elements do all share a scaffolding of tonality, a steady pulse, and a singing sense of melody – unsurprisingly when three of the five composers have written successful operas. 

The opening movement, Earth, was composed by Kevin Puts, whose The Hours had its time in the sun at the Metropolitan Opera recently. It opens with a four-note ostinato in the cellos, setting the stage for an espressivo solo-violin melody to unfold. The piece spends several minutes in a fully diatonic C major, then veers off into an effective contrast with a busier violin solo and staccato orchestra. The music dances and flows more volatilely through dynamic extremes, until the harp and solo violin harmonics return to the ostinato, and it ends as it began.

Water, by the versatile composer and bassist Edgar Meyer (no relation), opens with cascading eighth-note figures in the woodwinds. After a maybe too-cute use of a rain stick in the percussion section, the solo violin plays a series of septuplets in waves. The piece wastes no time crescendoing to fortissimo, then easing back, and continues creating undulations in pitch, dynamics and orchestration, while Bell pushes the limits of human ability in the rapidity of the runs Meyer calls for. Like Earth, it constructs and runs a gamut all on its own. 

Starting with a fiery accent, Fire by Jake Heggie leaps into action. Heggie, the composer of several operas including Dead Man Walking, uses the solo violin with a melodic, Eastern European flair in the movement, with trills and sul ponticello bowing. The texture tamps down to a shimmering, quieter feeling, although Bell's part remains active. The movement cycles back with crescendos and accelerandos and concludes with another fortissimo accent.

Jennifer Higdon, the composer of the opera Cold Mountain, says in her program note for Air that it's calmer – that is, airier – than the other movements of the piece. It's certainly true at the outset, establishing a gently developing, lush-harmony palette familiar to anyone who has heard her big orchestral hit Blue Cathedral. It grows to a full fortissimo, showing off Bell again, but perhaps not as gruelingly as the other movements. As it draws toward the end, Higdon thins the texture by having principals only play, and ends pianissimo. 

Jessie Montgomery's Space launches with an unsettled vibe. This is the dangerous kind of space, where no one can hear you scream. Montgomery, an accomplished violinist herself, gives Bell a flashy cadenza that appears idiomatic, to judge by the economy of motion required to play it. Like the other movements, Space ranges from pianissimo to fortissimo, builds in a section of contrasting tempo, and ends as it began. As Space ends, a reprise of Earth begins attacca, the seam not clearly audible to the audience. The four-note ostinato returns, rounding off the set of pieces.

Montgomery is correct that all the elements of The Elements have enough in common to match. They all use a large orchestra, show off Bell, last several minutes, stay tonal and cycle through a full gamut of dynamics and contrasting tempos. This makes the set unlike, say, a traditional symphony, where individual movements have more individual characteristics such as slow or fast tempos or consistent time signatures. There's no scherzo in The Elements.

But there is a kinship among them. Instead of being like a single book, the pieces are like parts of an anthology, somewhat modular and separable. And indeed, Montgomery has written an ending to Space marked "Optional Ending" that concludes the movement on its own terms. The Elements isn't exactly a great piece; it's great pieces.

It feels odd to marginalize the excellent playing of the CSO on Weber's Overture to Oberon and Shostakovich's Symphony no. 1, which began and ended the program. Juraj Valčuha interpreted both with impressive sensitivity and attention to detail, clearly knowing the strength and skill of the orchestra under his baton (or his batonless hands, in the third movement of the Shostakovich).