John Corigliano: To Music

Approfondimenti

John Corigliano is a difficult composer to pin down stylistically. The generally tonal orientation of his music and the cinematic quality that made his score for The Red Violin such a success have brought him a beloved status rare among contemporary composers. Yet, it would be wrong to call him neo-Romantic; his music has deep rigor and sometimes, as in the Symphony No. 2 on offer here, a quite grim quality. This 2022 release from the Boston Modern Orchestra does not include his most famous works -- The Red Violin in either its film score or violin concertos forms, The Ghosts of Versailles, or the Symphony No. 1 -- but it offers an excellent window into the richness of Corigliano's music, in which a great variety of elements collide in unexpected ways. One of those elements is quotation, on display in the opening work, To Music; it is based on Schubert's song An die Musik, which is assembled with great subtlety over five and a half minutes. Perhaps the high point is Troubadours: Variations for guitar and chamber orchestra, originally written for and recorded by Sharon Isbin; guitarist Eliot Fisk catches the unique lyricism of this lovely work. The Symphony No. 2, adapted from an earlier string quartet, contains a remarkable fugue that exemplifies Corigliano's way of using classical forms to bring order to distinctly modern impulses. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project approaches the work with real enthusiasm, and for anyone wanting to get beyond the Corigliano "hits," this makes a fine choice.

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