Friday night I attended the world premiere performances of Aaron Jay
Kernis' and Michael Torke's "Millenium Symphonies".  The New York
Philharmonic, New York Choral Artists, and the American Boys Choir with
Kurt Masur Conducting.  Along with the regular Playbill came a high-gloss
booklet detailing the process involved in commissioning these two extremely
large works as well as the texts and pictures of the artists involved.

To say it was an evening of contrasts is an understatement.  My personal
bias led me to expect more affection for the Torke work, as I have found
his music much more original and invigorating, as well as better conceived
for the orchestra.  Kernis to me has always seemed a 'run of the mill'
neo-romantic composer, typically American, whose truly original voice
emerges more often in his chamber music (his second string quartet won
the 1998 Pulitzer Prize).

Kernis' work, titled "Garden of Light" was first on the program.  The work
was cast in two movements....the first a depiction of the creation of the
world out of chaos [cue Haydn's Creation].  The massive second movement
 [lasting around 30 minutes] recants nine stories tracing specific instances
of human progress (?) through the millenium.  The nine stories told are:
discovery of fire, Newton's discovery of gravity, Michalengelo's painting
of the Sistine Chapel, the Insurrection, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet,
discovery of electricity, invention of the light bulb, the Holocaust, and
the Atomic bomb.  The last section, depicting the atomic bomb, leads to a
choral response asking if all hope has been lost.  Then comes an extended
Baritone solo which brings hope back into the picture ["Is there a
place....?".  The 'finale' of this movement is a preachy number with all
forces combined.

Kernis is an accomplished composer, technically gifted and capable of
originality.  However, this score was a huge letdown.  Rhetorically it
was extremely derivative of early-20th century English Oratorios [think
Belshazzar's Feast and Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony].  The text was also
extremely patronizing and preachy.  The orchestra and sense of timing were
the strong points, although again nothing really notably original stuck out
in these.  Melodies which seemd to be striving for memorability [the "Is
there a place...?" theme] simply weren't.  The composer's interview about
the piece emphasizes colour, light, and sparks of which there were very few
in the piece.  In fact, it seemed extremely self conscious in its attempts
to be all that "Disney" personifies.

Torke's piece, "Four Seasons", was cast in 12 short-ish movements, 3
for each 'season'.  Similar to the Kernis work, Torke traces important
historical events, although this time confining himself temporally to the
20th-century and geographically to America.  Some of the movements also
tend to express an American "idea" rather than a specific event.  Winter
is comprised of an orchestral 'danse macabre', an aria from a soldier
returning from the Korean War, and a man and woman settling the suburbs.
Fall is represented by 'a young Negro girl about to cross the color line',
the assasinations of JFK, Robert Kennedy, and MLK, and [forgive my baseball
ignorance] a pitcher's growing doubt as he foresees a perfect no-hitter in
sight.  Summer was represented by 'the summer of love', an American POW in
Hanoi hearing of the walk on the moon, and a woman raising her children on
an American farm.  An episode of American Bandstand, entrepeneurism, and a
children's playground song made up Spring.

First and foremost I must say that I think this is a *major* American
work.  Original, pleasing, and extremely communicative, Torke has chosen
non-obvious events and combined them in a way that is wholly personal yet
amazingly touching.  The only problem with the work is that it seemed a
piece written to celebrate America's past 60 years rather than celebrating
the entire world's past millenium.

The opening danse macabre was a masterful way to draw the audience into the
work, a typically Torke-esque minimalist romp.  The lengthy aria comprising
the second movement was beautiful indeed, but it was the third movement
that stuck out in the first 'season'.  "I can't find my house....." was an
extraordinary feat of composition employing minimalism in a perfect way
to represent the confusion of a husband and a wife trying to figure out
exactly how the suburbs were born.  The mezzo-soprano aria [beautifully
sung by Mary Phillips] intoning a little Negro girls plea to God for
strength was extremely beautiful and moving with an amazing horn line for
Phil Meyers.  The assassination tone poem was chillingly still indeed,
Torke's odd rhythms used to portray a Sibelius-like sense of time, while
the baseball player's aria broke the tension with pure entertainment.  The
Summer of Love brought Torke's characteristic rock-and-roll quotes into
the piece to excellent effect leading to the beautifully austere report
from the POW in Hanoi, expanding to three tenor soloists.  The American
Bandstand account was much fun, the movement that the orchestra and
soloists [Margaret Lloyd and Anthony Dean Griffey (I believe)] seemed to
enjoy performing the most.  The entrepeneureal episode was a bewildering
tour de force of Torke's technical prowess....repeated ostinatos misplaced
and replaced, layered, expanded and contracted.

The finale could have been disaterous....Torke has the children's chorus
run up to the stage and intone the child's rhyme "Nah Nah nahnah nah nah",
upon which he composed a brilliant fantay including several fugal episodes.
While I was tempted to think of this as unneccessary bombast, it brought a
huge smile to the entire audience's face and a sense of "happily ever
after" to the close of the work.

The philharmonic, Masur, choirs and soloists all seemed to enjoy the
performances, which were the best I have ever heard from the Philharmonic
live.  The audience response to Kernis' work was lukewarm at best, while
Torke's work received an near-immediate standing ovation after the last
bar---indicating it's more communicative nature.

There will be another performance of the works Tomorrow evening [10/12/99]
and I encourage all listers in the NYC area to try and make an extremely
enjoyable concert.

Cheers,

Marcus Maroney
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http://www.geocities.com/marcus.maroney