By William R. Braun
Opera News
01-Jan-2009

A listener who happens to be in a similar position to the one Corigliano was in (knowing only the tune for "Blowin' in the Wind") can admire the cycle on its own terms. Corigliano's music, non-tonal and non-threatening, doesn't stray far from the Bernstein-Copland axis. "Clothes Line," with lots of open space in the textures and mostly even note values, could almost pass for something Laurie might sing in Copland's The Tender Land. One interpretation of the text is that it is full of humor, irony and non sequiturs, but Corigliano's version is certainly plausible. "All Along the Watchtower" and "Masters of War" have many moments of the withdrawal of a mad scene. Corigliano points up the way the latter text makes Dylan seem like an American Eichendorff in his deliberate indirection. The composer is more cautious with "Blowin' in the Wind," a song so familiar that some people think it is a folk tune. This setting is a steady dirge, appropriately enough, although the phrase lengths are irregular. Corigliano's faith in the text extends to using Dylan's "'n" for "and", which highlights the intended incongruity of employing a classically trained singer for this project.

There is a real attempt to make a coherent cycle of the poems. "Mr. Tambourine Man," implying the overall idea of a dream sequence before turning to Final Alice-like nonsense acts as a prelude. The sixth song, in which the "Chimes of Freedom" are sounded quite literally in the orchestra along with snatches of Ivesian half-remembered melody, steals directly the finale. Here "Forever Young" is sung, mostly a cappella, as if by someone older and chastened, to the younger self after surviving some sort of cataclysm. Soprano Hila Plitmann performs the songs with amplification when she sings them in concert, so she is able to make them moodier and more intimate than she could in an acoustic performance. She certainly has microphone technique. For the recording, she was dubbed in on top of the prerecorded orchestra track, which makes it hard to evaluate conductor JoAnn Falletta's contribution. Even with a bonus of some of Corigliano's Altered States soundtrack, this recording barely cracks the fifty-minute mark. It would have been interesting, and most likely pleasurable, to hear Plitmann in some of the music from The Ghosts of Versailles, which never got a commercial recording.

By Howard Goldstein
BBC Music Magazine
01-Dec-2008

Performance:
Recording:

These world premier recordings of major vocal works by John Corigliano both share a ‘Dylan’, making a double review irresistible. [CORIGLIANO: Mr Tambourine Man 8.559331 &
CORIGLIANO: A Dylan Thomas Trilogy 8.559394]. A Dylan Thomas Trilogy consists of works dating back to 1959 (‘Fern Hill’), 1970 (‘Poem in October’), and 1976 (‘Poem on his Birthday’). By 1999, Corigliano had transformed these into a full-fledged oratorio for three soloists, chorus and large orchestra. Mr Tambourine Man (2000) sets lyrics by Bob Dylan for amplified soprano and orchestra. Having never heard the original songs, he created a unique example of ‘reverse crossover’, responding to the texts with the same intelligent approach to word painting, text alteration, and formal shaping that he provided the other Dylan.

The progress of Thomas’s voice from boyhood to maturity in the chosen poems is mirrored in the evolution of the composer’s, where the most recent music contains a welcome dose of acerbity. ‘Poem on his Birthday’ is thus the culmination of the trilogy, where the poet’s raging against, and eventual acceptance of, middle age inspired the composer to create a musical language quite different than any he had used before.

Corigliano is especially sensitive to Thomas’s violent, often musical imagery, filled with birds, ghosts, and stormy seas, and one hears a lightweight version of this new style in the Three Hallucinations from the film Altered States that appear on the other disc [CORIGLIANO: Mr Tambourine Man 8.559331]. Slatkin and his Nashville forces are persuasive advocates, and Sir Thomas Allen contributes a harrowing performance, but, overall, Corigliano’s invention does not quite measure up to that of the poetry.

The Bob Dylan cycle also charts a progression from innocence (‘Clothes Line’) to the ‘victory of ideas’ (‘Chimes of Freedom’). Here Corigliano’s gifts shine more brightly whether in the jerky, nursery rhyme setting of the title song, the haunting passacaglia that shapes ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, or the simplicity of ‘forever Young’. While there are no overt references to pop music, Corigliano still follows the outlines of the original songs, with mostly strophic settings and clear-cut melodies. Hila Plitmann, with equal experience in opera, film and musical theatre, has exactly the right kind of natural, microphone-friendly delivery, although her overdubbed performance lends the recording an artificial perspective.

By Howard Smith
Music & Vision
12-Nov-2008

I'd dearly love to know what Robert Allen Zimmerman (also known as singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan) would make of Corigliano's settings of seven seminal Dylan lyrics. It seems an unlikely conjugation—Corigliano (70) and Dylan (67); but why not?

Both are extraordinarily gifted. In 1986 Corigliano won the BAFTA Anthony Asquith Award for his Revolution. His Symphony No 1 gained the Grawemeyer Award (University of Louisville, Kentucky) and the 1999 Academy Award for an Original Music Score went to The Red Violin. The Symphony No 2 bagged a Pulitzer Prize for Music.

By David Denton
01-Sep-2008

Using the words of the folk singer and songwriter, Bob Dylan, John Corigliano has created the first major American orchestral song cycle of the 21st century.

Never a fan of folk music, he had been persuaded by a friend to read the words to some of Dylan’s songs and found he had empathy with their content. Born in New York City in 1938, the son of the New York Philharmonic concertmaster, Corigliano belongs to that group of composers who work within tonal and melodic music while using aspects of contemporary influences. The roots of Mr.Tambourine Man go back to Italian late Romantic opera with a hint of Mahler, yet always with American composers of the Copland era as the major influence. Whimsical, disturbing and finally at peace, the songs were originally for voice and piano, a colourful orchestral accompaniment later added in 2003. The soprano was then defined as an amplified voice to avoid the need for a singer of operatic proportions. It is a score that I find deeply moving, readily attractive and standing shoulder to shoulder with the famous song-cycles of the previous century. You do need the booklet’s printed words, Hila Plitmann’s diction not always squeaky clean, but her vocal quality and tonal shadings so ideally encapsulate the essence of the songs. The disc is completed by Three Hallucinations, using material from his film music for Ken Russell’s film Altered States. They are cast in the form of religious distortions and require considerable orchestral virtuosity. Throughout the Buffalo Philharmonic under JoAnne Falletta are in superb form, the fabulous recording quality conveying the inner clarity of their playing. Corigliano was the Producer for Mr.Tambourine Man, so we are assured the performance forms a benchmark.