Maazel’s Only 21st Century Recording

Composer John Adams (uploaded on January 5, 2008, by Macror from English Wikipedia, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

The last of the CDs of orchestral performances in the Lorin Maazel: The Complete Warner Edition provides the only account of music from the current century. “On the Transmigration of Souls” was composed by John Adams on a commission by the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center's Great Performers. The work was intended as a “musical response” to the attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 (now known colloquially as 9/11). It was premiered in Avery Fisher Hall of Lincoln Center by the New York Philharmonic on September 19, 2002; and the CD is based on recordings of the performances that took place between September 19 and September 24.

The music has the richest instrumentation of all of the orchestral compositions in the Warner collection. The instrumental resources require piccolo, three flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), three oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, two tubas, timpani, four percussionists, piano, celesta, “quarter-tone piano,” 2 harps, strings, and pre-recorded tape. There is only one vocal soloist, boy soprano Preben Antonsen, who is presumably a member of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, which is joined by the New York Choral Artists.

Those with even a smattering of music history know that, over many centuries, music has been composed as a “response” to the “call” of a historical event. The most familiar of those “responses” is probably Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 49, usually known as the “1812 Overture.” This was composed to celebrate a victory, which is very much the “flip side” of the event marked by “On the Transmigration of Souls.” That said, the Maazel recording was my “first contact” with Adams’ composition, leading me to wonder if I shall ever listen to it in Davies Symphony Hall!