VA: PRISMA Vol. 3
Navona Records

With any compilation, the hope is that there'll be at least one or two pieces that leave lasting impressions. On that count, this third installment in Navona's PRISMA series succeeds, with a number of its seven contemporary orchestral works leaving a powerful mark. Works by Ahmed Alabaca, Sarah Wallin Huff, Noam Faingold, Raisa Orshansky, Craig Morris, Scott Brickman, and Audun G. Vassdal appear, all performed by the Janácek Philharmonic Orchestra (Robert Kružík and Jirí Petrdlík conductors) and recorded last year in Ostrava, Czech Republic.

Contrast in moods and styles naturally result when the works involved include ones memorializing a deceased friend and a central Russian poet and others celebrating the seasons of the year. Certainly one of the standouts is Alabaca's Ascension for Solo Clarinet and String Orchestra, an eloquent elegy written in memory of Rex Aniciete, a Southern California clarinetist and friend of the composer. Purposefully crafted to capture Aniciete's spirit, the eight-minute setting advances from a tender opening into dynamic outpourings of emotion, the breadth of his personality conveyed by Karel Dohnal's heartfelt clarinet performance and the grandeur of the string orchestra's accompaniment. While that magnificent opener sets the bar extremely high, other pieces impress too. Wallin-Huff's brooding The Dark Glass Sinfonia is as mysterious as its title, the composer here melding atonality with modal harmony in a dramatic tone poem that recalls at certain moments Bartok and Shostakovich.

Written in the week after the outspoken poet's death in April 2017, Faingold conceived The Defiant Poet: Elegy in Memory of Yevgeny Yevtushenko as a “symphonic daydream” honouring his life and the stands he took against genocide, violence, and anti-semitism, perhaps most famously in “Babi Yar," used by Shostakovich in the first movement of his thirteenth symphony. A panoramic odyssey stretching across twelve minutes, the piece draws upon the full resources of the orchestra, alternating between dramatic episodes featuring expressive playing by a solo violinist and quieter ones that position harp and vibraphone at the forefront.

Similar to Faingold, inspiration for Orshansky's symphonic poem, Spring Fantasy, came from a Russian poet, in this case Alexander Blok and his poem “Oh, spring without end.” Uplifting in tone and centering on themes of birth and renewal in nature, her five-minute setting is suitably lyrical, featuring as it does the bright timbres of harp, flute, and glockenspiel alongside the strings' lilting rhythms. Expanding on the focus of Orshansky's piece, Morris's tone poem Songs of the Seasons uses four short movements to evoke the changes associated with different times of the year. Whereas “Winter Snowfall” and “Spring Raindrops” respectively revel in the splendour of a new snowfall and the joy of nature's annual rebirth, “Summer Waves” conjures the joy of innocent days at the beach and “Fall Colors” the bittersweet segue into autumn that inevitably follows.

Two eleven-minute settings, Brickman's Restoration and Vassdal's Prelude & Fugue for Orchestra, close the set. The former, described the composer as a “symphony in one movement,” honours his Latvian and Polish heritage by infusing its music with allusions to Eastern European folk songs; Vassdal's, on the other hand, might seem like the least programmatic of all the recording's pieces given that its writing developed from pure inspiration, yet the composer also characterizes it as “a therapeutic journey through a hard time, leading to a resolution of psychological trauma.” Regardless, as an exercise in compositional form that exemplifies its creator's liberal handling of classical form principles, the material is gripping, advancing as it does from a portentous prelude that builds incrementally in intensity before segueing into passages driven by cryptic, waltz-like flourishes and mischievous melody-making.

Thoughtfully curated, PRISMA Vol. 3 is distinguished by the diversity of the composers' voices but also the diverse subject matter of the works presented. The quality level is high throughout, but the release earns its recommendation for the pieces by Alabaca, Wallin-Huff, and Vassdal in particular. Of all the album's settings, one imagines these three would most stop an audience in its collective tracks upon encountering them in a concert set-list.

March 2020