Avner Dorman – Siklòn
Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Gil Rose
BMOP Sound 1090 (bmop.org/audio-recordings)
Much-performed, multi-award-winning Avner Dorman (b.Tel Aviv 1975) says his eight-minute Siklòn (2015) “reflects the violent nature of Miami’s hurricanes” (siklòn – Haitian Creole for “hurricane”) “as well as the frenzy of energy from a place driven by hot weather, sometimes clashing ideas and the effervescence of youth.” The highly percussive perpetuum mobile rushes headlong toward an extended, cacophonous crescendo of rising brass fanfares.
Dorman’s 14-minute Astrolatry (2011) depicts a prehistoric nocturnal ritual. Glittering glockenspiel and harp help illuminate awed reverence in Celestial Revelations; marimba and bass drum underline the savage orgiastic dance of The Worship of the Stars. The five-movement, 13-minute Uriah: The Man the King Wanted Dead (2009) recounts King David’s arranging the death of Bathsheba’s husband in dramatic, near-cinematic music. (Astrolatry and Uriah’s scenarios and music would make powerful ballets.)
In the 11-minute After Brahms: Three Intermezzi for Orchestra (2015), inspired by Brahms’ late piano works, rich, warm, late-Romantic sonorities support the urgent Allegro con molto appassionato, gentle Delicatamente con molta espressione and autumnal Adagio espressivo.
Violence returns with the 19-minute Ellef Symphony (2000; ellef – Hebrew for “one thousand”). Fear is filled with sombre foreboding, Slaughter with martial brutality. Elegy portrays a mother grieving over her dead son; …(silence) offers “a prospect for peace” with “the new millennium as an empty canvas…it is up to us to write the poem of the future.”
Conductor Gil Rose and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project vividly perform Dorman’s very vivid compositions.
