Rapture / An American Abroad / Jasper
Michael Torke

Colin Currie, percussion
Marin Alsop, conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Naxos 8.559167

Summary: Yowza!

Poor Michael Torke has a hard time being taken seriously, largely because
he writes uniformly optimistic, pop-tinged, lively, soul-easing music.
But then Gershwin had the same problem in his era. Torke's time will
come, I strongly suspect. And this release will help.

Someone has called him 'the American Ravel'. That's over-reaching a bit,
but I can see their point. Torke is a master orchestrator (possibly the
best currently working in America, although John Adams is right up there
with him), and there is an insouciance that we generally associate with
20th-century French composers. He can write a meltingly beautiful tune,
and he is a master of complex recognizably _American_ rhythms, some of
them Latin American. He has been fortunate to have had wonderful recordings
of his music; I'm thinking now of that string of Argo releases featuring
David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony.

For several years Torke was composer-in-residence for the Royal Scottish
National Orchestra, and all three pieces on this CD were written for
them.  The title of the first, 'An American Abroad', reminds us of
Gershwin's 'An American in Paris', but that's about the only similarity
- and there are no taxi horns in the score! The predominant feeling in
this 21 minute piece is that of an American, fresh-faced, curious, nayve,
full of wonder wandering from place to place in a journey abroad. There
are some invigorating rhythms (always a feature of Torke's music) and a
middle section, rather more reflective, that has one of Torke's patented
tunes, the kind that get in your head and won't leave you alone. There
is a touch of melancholy in this section; it made me think of the sadness
of leaving wonderful travels behind when it's time to go home. But then
there is the excitement of going back to familiar places and people.
Hmmm, I've just described a 21st Century tone-poem, haven't I? Liszt and
Richard Strauss would be proud.  The shorter second piece, 'Jasper', is
a set of informal variations on a simple tune, one that uses each of the
notes of the diatonic scale only once. The tune gets dressed up in varying
rhythms and instrumentation, but retains its recognizability.

The final piece, the longest on the disc at 28 minutes, is a percussion
concerto, entitled 'Rapture', written for and performed by the brilliant
young (very young: he's only 26, and was only 23 when he premiered it)
Colin Currie. A percussionist friend tells me that 'he beats Evelyn
Glennie all hollow'; I'm not prepared to say that, but he certainly is
hugely talented. I only wish I could _see_ him performing the piece. The
concerto has an unusual form in that each of the three movements features
a different subset of the percussion family. The first is subtitle 'Drums
and Woods', the second 'Mallets', and the last 'Metals'. You get the
idea.  Needless to say, Torke's rhythmic vitality and ingenuity get a
real workout here. The insistent rhythm in the first movement leads
eventually to a kind of hypnotic state in the listener, the 'Rapture'
of the title. This, in itself, is not my own cup of tea, but I did get
caught up in the jittery excitement of it all. The second movement, the
one with mallet instruments, is less frenetic and more intrinsically
melodic, lots of deep marimba, lots of chords of the ninth. I will admit
that it was my favorite; I guess I'd been a bit worn out by the first
movement. But we're off to the races again, this time with a salsa beat,
in movement three and the whole thing ends up in a flurry almost
unbelievable virtuosity on the part of Currie.  Hoo boy!

One personal note: whenever I am really down and am having real trouble
remembering that this is a wonderful world, I often put on something of
Torke's - my long-time favorite has been 'Javelin', which he wrote on
commission for the Atlanta Olympic Games (and which they inexplicably
did not use!) - and my spirits come bubbling up; it is simply impossible
for me to stay down with this music in the air.

Scott Morrison