Gerald Levinson: Now Your Colors Sing
Innova

One of the more remarkable things about Now Your Colors Sing is the temporal span of its ten works. Whereas the earliest piece, in dark (three poems of the night), was written in 1972 when Gerald Levinson was only twenty years old, others of recent vintage—two from 2015 and a 2012 piece revised four years later—are included. The double-CD retrospective thus affords an invaluable opportunity to witness this Connecticut-born composer's evolution across multiple decades. A few bio-related details deserve mention. As a university student in America, Levinson studied under George Crumb, Richard Wernick, George Rochberg, and Ralph Shapey and at the Paris Conservatory with Olivier Messiaen. A professor of music at Swarthmore College since 1977, Levinson studied music in Bali during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s and followed that with excursions to Thailand, Burma, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. All such experiences exerted a profound impact on his music, evidence of which is heard on the Innova collection. Two pieces for solo piano, for example, are homages to Messiaen and Bartók, and a strong Balinese influence permeates the soundworld of others.

Many of his major works are featured, including Anahata (Symphony No. 1) (1984-86) and Avatar (2003); other large-scale works include At the Still Point of the Turning World, There the Dance Is (2002), performed by an ensemble of reeds, strings, guitar, and percussion, and the title composition (2011), scored for double string orchestra. Complementing them are pieces for smaller configurations, including a five-part cycle for soprano and chamber ensemble, and solo instruments, the latter represented by three piano-based settings and another featuring the great organ of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris two years before the 2019 fire.

Though Avatar was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra for the inaugural concert of Music Director Christoph Eschenbach in 2003, it's here performed by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony under Hugh Wolff's direction. Sequenced first, the work serves as an optimal scene-setter, given how boldly it showcases Levinson's expansive soundworld. Multiple instrumental families fluidly converge during the fourteen-minute piece, the arrangement rich in woodwinds, horns, strings, and percussion, and the latter in particular responsible for the mystery and exoticism of the work. Bell chords and high-pitched wood and metal percussion blend in material that singlehandedly encapsulates the composer's East-meets-West style. Agitated passages alternate with calmer episodes, and while melody is present, the larger emphasis is on atmosphere and evocation as the instrumental elements collectively suggest primal forces in play.

Wolff also conducts Anahata (Symphony No. 1) though this time with the American Composers Orchestra performing the single-movement work. Even with nine other compositions presented, Anahata is the release's centrepiece, its title a Sanskrit term meaning ‘unstruck' and intended to suggest something immaterial potentially perceptible by humans through meditation and music. After clangorous flourishes and bell-like sonorities in the opening minutes that evoke both Bartók and Louis Andriessen, the work fleshes out its colourful soundworld with metal percussion and mystery-invoking woodwinds. Gamelan- and raga-related influences again emerge within a design founded, according to Levinson, on three melodic ideas: bold, melismatic woodwind phrasings; a slow lament voiced by the English horn; and string figures that are transformations of the opening woodwind-related material. It's easy to appreciate why the work has such an elevated stature within his oeuvre when the material mesmerizes for its full half-hour.

Performed by the nine-member Network for New Music Ensemble and its title derived from Eliot's Four Quartets, At the Still Point of the Turning World, There the Dance Is oscillates between movement and stasis, Levinson again demonstrating an inordinate talent for weaving contrasting stylistic elements into a coherent and in this case hypnotic whole. The combination of guitar, metal percussion, oboe, bass clarinet, strings, and saxophones (baritone and soprano) makes for an unusual palette, especially when the composer's sinuous music advances like a snake slithering slowly through long grasses. Unfolding across twenty-two minutes, ample opportunities arise for individual instruments to take the lead, and consistent with that passages arise where the soprano saxophone and oboe are at the forefront, their respective ‘dances' complemented by the incessantly mutating backdrop. Stillness and forward momentum go hand-in-hand during this adventurous exploration.

Written as a birthday present to his wife as well as in tribute to his one-time teacher, 2015's Chorale for Nanine, with Birds (Hommage à Messiaen) is performed by pianist Marcantonio Barone with great sensitivity. The pieces very much recalls Messiaen's writing when Levinson alludes to sparrows and chickadees in upper-register figures that tinkle alongside lower musings. In addition, Barone performs 1981's Musiques nocturnes (Hommage à Bartók), which in a fashion appropriate to the honouree works a reference to an Hungarian folk song into its presentation, and Ringing Changes (2015), on which he's joined by second pianist Charles Abramovic for an intricate yet nonetheless fluidly flowing exercise in perpetual motion inspired by Balinese gamelan and North Indian ragas. A final appearance by Barone occurs when he partners with the Orchestra 2001 Quartet for Crickets (2009), a short setting that sees the keyboard and strings evoking the chatter of the titular creatures using staccato, string harmonics, and overlapping rhythms.

Levinson wrote Au Coeur de l'infini for organist Olivier Latry to perform at a 2013 concert celebrating the 850th anniversary of Notre Dame Cathedral; this revised version was recorded by him in February 2017 on the cathedral's organ and is itself suitably great in its reach. Chords swell dramatically as if reaching to the heavens, the sound generated by the instrument so massive it feels engulfing. Finally, in dark (three poems of the night) appears here in a performance recorded in 1995 and issued on New World two years later. For its five sections, two of them vocalises, soprano Carmen Pelton's joined by the eight-member Orchestra 2001 ensemble. Levinson himself copped to the influences on the work of Crumb, with whom he had recently studied, and Messiaen, whose stint as his teacher had not yet arrived. It's possible to detect Crumb in the crepuscular tone of the material, and Messiaen also might be heard in the percussive details that inaugurate the work. Not that that should be held against Levinson, necessarily, given his age at the time: it would be an unusual composer indeed whose early works don't contain traces of others' works. In this case, one might be reminded of Crumb's Night of the Four Moons while listening to Levinson's.

Now Your Colors Sing obviously provides a splendid overview of Levinson's output. It's not the entire picture, of course—his body of work far exceeds ten compositions—but it's still comprehensive. I do wish, however, that the pieces were sequenced in the order of their creation as it would have made it easier to monitor his evolution over four decades. As quibbles go, though, it's a minor one.

August 2020