Bignamini’s Disappointing Recording Debut

Cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)

This coming Friday PENTATONE will release the debut recording of conductor Jader Bignamini, Music Director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO). Hopefully, there will be at least a few readers that recall my online interest in DSO, which dates back to a video of David Del Tredici’s “Final Alice” conducted by Leonard Slatkin, which I encountered back in September of 2012. Since then, my wife and I have done our best to keep up with the Live from Orchestra Hall telecasts, which, because of the difference in time zones, we usually watch over dinner.

In that context, I was delighted to have the opportunity to preview the new PENTATONE album. It consists of a single work, lasting a little more than an hour, composed by Wynton Marsalis. The title is “Blues Symphony;” but, if one is to be fair to terminology, it is more suite than symphony. The advance material I received provided the following description:

The work is triumphant ode to the power of the blues and the scope of America’s musical heritage. With a blend of influences from ragtime to habanera, the work takes listeners on a sonic journey through America’s revolutionary era, the early beginnings of jazz in New Orleans, and a big city soundscape that serves as a nod to the Great Migration.

Sadly, there is more content in those two sentences than there is in the seven movements of “Blues Symphony.” Marsalis does little more than crank out one cliché after another. Mind you, Bignamini does his best to lead the DSO players through each trope with as much nuance as he can muster; but, to invoke an old saying, there is only so much you can make from a sow’s ear!

Given the thoroughly impressive account of Igor Stravinsky’s music for “The Rite of Spring,” which was telecast almost exactly two months ago, DSO deserved a better debut recording than a one-hour slog through a Marsalis score.