Daugherty describes how Rivera’s Detroit Industry murals “have inspired me to create my own musical fresco for violin and orchestra. It was Rivera himself who predicted the possibility of turning his murals into music, after returning from a tour of the Ford factories: ‘In my ears, I heard the wonderful symphony which came from his factories where metals were shaped into tools for men’s service. It was a new music, waiting for the composer…to give it communicable form.’”

Cast in three movements, the first, Volcano, relates to the fiery factory furnaces in Rivera’s murals. The volcanic landscape around Mexico City was for Rivera a metaphor for revolutionary fervour, depicted in the music by fierce triple stops in the violin part and pulsating energy in the orchestra. The central movement River Rouge focuses on Rivera’s wife Frida Kahlo, referring to the colour of blood used in many of her paintings and her spiritual battle against physical pain, with Mexican mariachi music resonating in the background. The final movement Assembly Line is a machine-like perpetuo, with the soloist as the worker surrounded by orchestral punctuations and metallic factory sounds.

Fire and Blood is one of a series of concertos by Michael Daugherty recorded on the Naxos label, including Raise the Roof for percussionist and Deus ex Machina for pianist which recently won three Grammy awards. The most recent Naxos release with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop includes Route 66, Time Machine, and Ghost Ranch inspired by the desert art of Georgia O’Keeffe (Naxos 8.559613).

The music is not only recorded by its world premiere performers—these actually are the world premiere performances. So, it’s pretty authoritative. This also adds the excitement of music newborn close to the real joy of creation. The playing is so good that the applause at the end of each piece comes as a shock: what, this was live? And the recording quality is very commendable, spacious, catching every detail of the exotic orchestration.

Detroit is the motto of the disc, and the first work on it, Fire and Blood for Violin and Orchestra, is inspired by the Detroit Industry murals by Diego Rivera. The first part could be a depiction of Rivera’s fiery temperament. It could also reflect the fascination big, all-consuming fires—volcanos, industrial furnaces or revolutions—held for the artist. But conflagration also has a negative, destructive side, and this aspect is also present in the music. The middle part is dedicated to Rivera’s wife, Frida Kahlo. From out of a “red river of blood” rises a hauntingly beautiful melody—more Yiddish than Mexican to my ears. There is suffering, compassion, love and grief. It is one of the most touching pieces I have ever heard, at times completely breathtaking. Finally, in the short third part we arrive at the murals themselves. The violin is now the worker on a conveyor belt, while the orchestra is the machinery it operates. Among the industrial clinks and clangs, the violinist brings the work to its triumphant close.

The entire composition leaves the aftertaste of a well-made movie. The violin part is ambitious, and the soloist, Ida Kavafian, does wonders with her brilliant, powerful playing, full of life. The orchestra matches her dazzling virtuosity with its own. Here Daugherty outshines himself in inventing sonic gestures and thrilling effects. Indeed, I daresay that this is one of the most dramatic, rich and just beautiful—in that old-fashioned sense—pieces of music written in this century.

There is less unity in the earlier MotorCity Triptych. It consists of three large-scale pictures, which can also be regarded as independent pieces. Motown Mondays evokes the sounds of the famous Detroit nightclub in the Sixties. Pedal-to-the-Metal is a drive through Detroit’s Michigan Avenue, with its past and present colorfully mixed. Rosa Parks Boulevard is an imaginative essay on civil rights. The use of three trombones to depict voicmore....

MotorCity Triptych (2000) is a set of three tone poems touching on memories of Motown harmony and melody, Detroit urban landscape, and Rosa Parks’s church, the latter immortalized by a trio of trombones representing the tone of local black preachers. For the most part, Daugherty avoids facile allusion and sticks to a more abstract approach. You will need to use your imagination, since intended events are far from obvious, but the overall effect is impressive.

Finally, Raise the Roof (2003) is an effective and highly athletic concerto for timpani and orchestra, brilliantly played by timpanist Brian Jones. Built as a set of variations on two themes, the 13-minute piece puts the soloist through his (mainly melodic) paces with a minimum of gimmickry and a maximum of clear accessibility. This will be a welcome concert piece for timpanists looking for amiable virtuoso repertoire. The Detroit players sound great and are brilliantly recorded in performance.

Daugherty’s American heritage is unmistakable in the opening bars of Fire and Blood, a violin concerto composed in 2003. The musical language has its basis in a complex tonality, with a strong Bernstein-esque pulse and hints of folk music. The first movement has an innate energy, with a range of orchestral colours including some impressive metallic industrial sounds reminiscent of some twentieth century Russian music. Based on a mural by Diego Rivera which depicts Detroit’s legendary car manufacturing industry, the work is in three movements. The first movement is bold, brash and industrial—and enormously successful. The second movement represents aspects of Rivera’s wife, painter Frida Kahlo. This movement is much darker, with traditional Mexican influences coming to the fore. There are some wonderful moments of strength and hope amongst the sorrow, and this extended movement always maintained my interest. The dramatic final movement returns to the mood of the opening, with syncopated accents and metallic sounds. Describing the Assembly Line of the factory, this movement is brief and energetic, with a sense of the worker surrounded by machinery. This is a refreshingly honest work which has a sense of representing an aspect of modern life, with a skillful use of the orchestra and its instrumental colours. Ida Kavafin gives a dazzling violin performance, with a wonderful sense of occasion and gritty portrayal of the raw emotional aspects of the piece.

MotorCity Triptych, we are told, refers to an artwork, as well as to a fold-out map produced by the American Automobile Association as a travel guide to Detroit. The three movements depict different aspects of the city; entitled Motown Mondays, Pedal-to-the-Metal and Rosa Parks Boulevard—the titles speak for themselves. I find it interesting that this work draws attention to historical events and places them in a modern context, providing a tribute to a city and those who worked to make it what it is for a modern audience. Motown Mondays refers to just nine performances by Motown artists in the summer of 1966; these were nine performances which were enormously influential and Motown records, founded in Detroit, is still a household name. Daugherty’s work fuses aspects of the Motown style with his own language, providing an enjoyably invigorating approach to the orchestra. With an opening reminiscent of the Fanfare for the Common Man, Pedal-to-the-Metal has a bold, almost dark introduction, which breaks away into a fast paced adventure through the city. The final movement, Rosa Parks Boulevard provides a solo for the trombone section, based on African-American spirituals, including fragments of Oh Freedom, which was one of Rosa Parks’ favourites. Parks moved to Detroit in 1957, just two years after the famous event on more....

Among contemporary classical composers whose language is informed by popular music idioms, Michael Daugherty fuses the styles with a naturalness and authenticity that often elude his like-minded colleagues. His violin concerto Fire and Blood juggles soloist and orchestra in masterful balance, where the violin tunes play off of unusual percussive accents and the most unclichéd, varied harp glissandi you’ve encountered for the last 20 years. Raise the Roof for timpani and orchestra is appropriately titled, yet its strong melodic interest (do I get a whiff of the opening timpani solo in Strauss’s Burleske?) rather than volume alone buoys the massive tuttis. The Detroit Symphony’s dream brass section show off to high heaven in Motor City Triptych. The third movement is a tour de force for trombone trio, where Daugherty exploits the instruments’ patented slides to gorgeous, emotionally complex effect that manages to strike familiar chords without resorting to even one cliché. Neeme Järvi obviously relishes Daugherty’s boundless orchestral palette as much as the Detroit Symphony members do, and Naxos’s robust sonics can’t be beat. If you don’t know Michael Daugherty’s original, vibrant and very accessible music, now’s the time to buy this music, now’s the time to buy this splendid disc.