Music chronicle

Hudson Review, The, Spring 2003 by Clark, Robert S

Much of the Metropolitan's production was imported from the Lyric Opera of Chicago, including the principal singers (the only exception being Isabel Bayrakdarian), Frank Galati, the director, and Dennis Russell Davies, the conductor. The experience told at the Met in what was a superbly fluent and accomplished performance. Kim Josephson was assertive and somewhat rough of voice at times, but his portrayal of the frustrated and perverse Eddie fit the role like a glove. Catherine Malfitano's Beatrice was another in this astonishingly versatile singing actress's seemingly endless string of successes. The two romantic leads lent fresh young poignancy to their roles, and the supporting players were all effective. Among the latter, the Marco of Richard Bernstein stood out for its strength and ferocity. Davies drew from the Metropolitan orchestra the kind of top-flight performance that we have come to expect from this ensemble. The playing encompassed subtlety, ardor, menace and rage, all with an admirable polish.

For more than a quarter of a century, the American Composers Orchestra (ACO) has been devoted to the presentation of the work of America's composers in a manner unrivalled by any other ensemble in the country. To this date the ACO has performed more than 500 works by almost 400 American composers (since 1994 the "American" has taken in both North and South), including more than 100 world premieres and commissioned works. Almost as remarkable as this record is the fact of the generally high quality of the performances of often difficult music by musicians who must find their livelihood elsewhere. It is safe to say that no other single institution has approached the ACO in its service to American orchestral music.

In the spring of 2002, Steven Sloane succeeded Dennis Russell Davies, one of ACO's founders, as the second music director; Davies was named conductor laureate. In the fall of 2002, Mr. Sloane gave his inaugural concert as music director, and in its innovative programming and effective performances it was a fine way to start. The evening presented six American composers' takes on the Psalms. The composers, all but one of them living, ranged from Charles Ives to Milton Babbitt and John Harbison, and three of the works were world premieres of commissions by the ACO. For the most part it was a remarkable undertaking.

First up was Ives's setting of Psalm 100, "Make a Joyful Noise unto the Lord." In a rousing performance by the New York Virtuoso Singers, the setting seemed worthy of its initial line. The evening continued with David Lang's how to pray, the only work that did not directly use psalter texts. Lang calls what he has done his own "cantillations of the psalms- the rhythms, the accents and the pacing of the Hebrew." Scored for a large orchestra, the work sprang from the piano ostinato that opens Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, according to Lang. In its extremely modest progression it proved to be the least involving item of the evening.