Commissioned by the
NYPO to mark the first anniversary of
the World Trade Centre attacks, On
The Transmigration of Souls is a
twenty-five minute work, the significance
and context of which have been well
explored elsewhere. I know that Ives
has been cited as an important influence
– specifically The Unanswered Question,
which is here evoked by the trumpet
lines that appear at the beginning and
toward the end of the work. But perhaps
it’s Reich’s Different Trains
that is as apt a piece to consider in
its summoning up of voices and fragments
that generate their intensity through
repetition and use of the seemingly
quotidian.
The repetition of Missing
and the repeated use of individual names,
tape overlapped, co-exists with the
chorus’ initially mystic sounding lines.
The massing of layered sounds, of footsteps
on pavements, of the hieratic questing
trumpet set up the tensions that impact
in the first outburst at 11.20. It’s
after the choir repeats know where
he is that the baleful, braying
brass and constant orchestral ostinati
animate scurrying wind-like turbulence,
the metallic hammers and eerie sonorities
that glisten. Eventually consoling string
lines appear and the words I hear
water – a single voice, to the sound
of the wash of the sea and the redemption
of Love. That is at least something
of what, in plain language, you will
hear.
As a response to tragedy
it strives to maintain a balance between
a sense of numbed loss and of redemptive
promise. To this end the performance
is scrupulously well prepared and sumptuously
recorded.
Jonathan Woolf
see also reviews
by Neil
Horner (Recording of the Month)
and John
Quinn
New York Philharmonic Orchestra/Lorin Maazel
