Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose & Dawn Upshaw - John Harbison: Diotima (2021) [Official Digital Download]

Diotima is a significant release for many reasons, two worth noting immediately: it's the fifth album dedicated to works by American composer John Harbison (b. 1938) the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and conductor Gil Rose have issued; more pertinently, of the three works presented, one is the first he wrote for orchestra and another, created thirty-five years later, is in all probability his last. Anything but an afterthought, the third pairs Dawn Upshaw with the BMOP, not the first time the celebrated soprano has given voice to Harbison's material.

By any measure, he's had a staggering career. Included in the almost 300 works he's created are symphonies, operas, concerti, string quartets, song cycles, chamber works, a ballet, and sacred music. He's received prestigious awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship and Pulitzer Prize, seen his works issued on numerous labels aside from BMOP/sound, and continues working on new compositions to this day. Blessed with a warm, natural tone and an instantly recognizable voice, Upshaw has enjoyed a rewarding career also in her assured essaying of opera and concert repertoire. She began her career at the Metropolitan Opera, where she has since appeared nearly 300 times, and has performed many new works created for her, including Harbison's The Great Gatsby. Many listeners know her for her incredible performance on the 1992 Nonesuch release of Gorecki's Symphony No. 3, but it's merely one of many distinguished recordings in her discography.

Composed in1976, the titular work is noteworthy also for being its recording debut, a rather surprising fact given its power and quality. In being a twenty-minute tone poem marked by constant metamorphosis and an oft-anguished tone, it recalls works such as Richard Strauss's Tod und Verklärung and Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande. There's a literary derivation to the work, to Friedrich Hölderlin specifically. In liner notes, Clifton Ingram clarifies that “Diotima was the Romantic poet's code-name for Susette Gontard, his banker employer's wife for whom he held a deeply intense, almost hopeless passion” and whose death from influenza precipitated Hölderlin's mental breakdown in 1802. That the musical treatment is infused with oscillations between love and loss and the pain of yearning is perhaps explained in part by the suffering the poet experienced. Opening pensively, the music wends a brooding path, with long melodies unfurling across a tense foundation and bright splashes of woodwinds hinting at fleeting moments of joy. As the material alternates between episodes of agitation and lyricism, the writing at times recalls the anguished outer movements of Mahler's ninth symphony, the strings-only expression at the fifteen-minute mark, for example.

At the disc's centre is the eleven-part Milosz Songs for Soprano and Orchestra (2006), based on texts by Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004). In keeping with the intimacy of the poetry, the composer's score involves a customized performance setup whereby the soprano soloist is surrounded by a sextet of instruments, beyond which is the orchestra proper. With three decades separating the creation of Diotima and the song-cycle, one would expect a noticeable difference in the writing, and true enough Milosz Songs is considerably more emblematic of the style we've come to associate with Harbison. Still, some of the dissonance and angst heard in the earlier piece surfaces in the later one too, though the songs explore a broad tonal range when Harbison tailors music to the texts. In that regard, “Encounter” and “When the Moon” are particularly effective in the way they render vivid external sensations into wondrous evocations. One might also note the use of mallet instruments to accent the line “Striking gold medals in your honour” in “You Who Wronged” and the staccato musical treatment used to reinforce the words “Short days. Short nights. Short years.” in “So Little.” Needless to say, Upshaw responds to the work's oft-challenging melodies and mercurial mood swings with a poised and emotionally resonant performance that both humanizes it and bolsters its intimacy.

Creating a through-line from the song cycle to the Symphony No. 6 (2011) is Upshaw's presence in its opening movement, the text “Entering the Temple in Nimes” by James Wright. Adding to that sense of continuation is the richly coloured pastoral backdrop Harbison fashions for the singer to emote against and an emphasis on lyricism in the vocal writing. Markedly contrasting tonalities emerge in the three subsequent movements, however, with the specific trajectories of those departures intimated by phrases within Wright's text. The angst that so pervades Diotima re-emerges in the second movement in dissonant gestures and expressive string flurries; whereas the spirited third is animated by rousing horns, timpani, and vibraphone, the searching fourth adopts a comparatively more brooding mien that finds a despairing quality seeping into its at times agitated design.

In boasting three stellar treatments of the composer's material, Diotima is a fine complement to the other Harbison releases already issued by the BMOP and Rose. Certainly the relationship they share has benefited both extraordinarily: through the BMOP's efforts, Harbison has become better-known, and his work has been presented with all the care for which the orchestra has become known; and in being provided with so much excellent material to record, the BMOP's stature has been enhanced, its 2021 'Special Achievement Award' from Gramophone a recent testament to that.

Tracklist:
01. Diotima
02. Milosz Songs: Prologue from Lauda
03. Milosz Songs: 1. A Task
04. Milosz Songs: 2. Encounter
05. Milosz Songs: 3. You Who Wronged
06. Milosz Songs: 4. When the Moon
07. Milosz Songs: 5. O!
08. Milosz Songs: 6. What Once Was Great
09. Milosz Songs: 7. So Little
10. Milosz Songs: 8. On Old Women
11. Milosz Songs: Epilogue: from Winter
12. Milosz Songs: Post-Epilogue: Rays of Dazzling Light
13. Symphony No. 6: I.
14. Symphony No. 6: II.
15. Symphony No. 6: III.
16. Symphony No. 6: IV.


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