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Carmina Cola Orange County
Segerstrom Hall, Orange County Performing Arts Center
10/13/2000 -
Philip Glass: Symphony No. 5: Requiem, Bardo, Nirmanakaya (1999)
Kimberly Jones (soprano), Milagro Vargas (mezzo-soprano), John McVeigh (tenor), Andre Solomon-Glover (baritone), Andrew Wentzel (bass-baritone)
Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Pacific Chorale, Pacific Chorale Children’s Chorus
Carl St. Clair (conductor)
A large and diverse crowd flocked to an enterprising Orange County Performing Arts Center for the West Coast premiere of Philip Glass’s ambitious new, 12-movement Symphony No. 5. The 100-minute “millennium celebration work” was commissioned by the Salzburg Festival, where it was premiered last year, with financial support by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Flanders Festival.
The composer’s program notes explained that his new creation represents “a broad spectrum of many of the world’s great ‘wisdom’ traditions.” Despite its pretensions, however, and the torrent of words and hypnotic music it unleashed, the Symphony turned out to be more concept than symphony. Obsessed with the notion of size as an indicator of power, Glass adds chorus, children’s choir and five soloists to the large orchestra, thereby, he says “giving it ample breadth and dramatic capability.” In practice, the conglomeration of Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and indigenous language texts, all translated into English, overwhelmed any musical purpose or expressive notions the trendy but slight music might have had.
The Symphony ‘s shortcomings were emphasized by Carl St. Clair’s decision (presumably with the composer’s assent, since he was in attendance) to focus on the physical beauty of the orchestral waves of sound that subsequently engulfed the hall. St. Clair and his impressive orchestra, as they so usually do, gave the music an intelligent, plastic reading which did indicate that there may be more to the music than just its predictable harmonic fluctuations and sing-song inflexions.
Unfortunately, this focus on the orchestral sound made the words from the Pacific Chorale, who sang well loud or soft, and the quintet of soloists, who rarely sang well, largely unintelligible. Matters were not helped by the somnolent audience (including one noted critic nodding off now and then) with whom it was difficult for the musicians to make contact, further reducing the sense of communion on which the concept if not the music depends. At the end, of course, the audience all woke up and gave the performance a standing ovation.
You can hear the Symphony to much better effect on a brand new Nonesuch recording, with Dennis Russell Davies and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. There, the pace is quick and dramatic, and the engineers have rigged the balance so that you can hear every word. But even on the recording, it too often sounds like a New Age Carmina Burana infused with the intellectual weight of a soft drink jingle.
With the Middle East threatening to blow the world apart again, and various human tragedies around the globe refusing to neatly go away, Glass’s new Symphony may simply become irrelevant for embarking on its peace mission with such little regard for the painfully dark and intimate aspects of reality.
The concert kicked off the beginning of the 7-week Eclectic Orange Festival 2000 during which 66 performances will be highlighted by concerts by Ursula Oppens and Aki Takehashi, the NDR Symphony with Christoph Eschenbach, Anonymous 4, András Schiff, Andrew Manze and the Academy of Ancient Music, the Philharmonic Baroque Orchestra, and Ute Lemper.
Laurence Vittes
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