Michael Daugherty has become one of the 10 most performed living American composers. His dramatic sense and brilliant orchestration demonstrated in engaging, and audience-pleasing, orchestral works have helped him carve out that respect over the past twenty years. Marin Alsop’s new release is a sort of musical journey from the familiar into time and space and features four pieces composed over the last ten years. But it is important to start with the work that began Daugherty’s rise in the orchestral world, Metropolis Symphony.

The 2009 Naxos recording is a critically acclaimed release that features a piano concerto and the Metropolis Symphony in a generous 75-minute recording. The symphony was begun in 1988 and premiered in 1994 by its dedicatee David Zinman with the Baltimore Symphony. The work is a paean to comic book heroes, and specifically the iconic Superman. Cast in five movements, the work is really a series of miniatures dramatically depicting specific scenarios or characters. The first movement (“Lex”) focuses on Lex Luthor in what is a scherzo-like piece reminiscent of a Hollywood action cue. Daugherty’s musical language pulls together the threads of contemporary classical music (the scurrying, almost aleatoric segments show influence of Ligeti and Penderecki), with the sort of action adventure music one hears in the film works of say Goldsmith or Goldenthal. Beyond the always brilliant orchestration, is the flirtation with jazz and popular musical sounds and an innate structural sense that allows even the strangest of musical combinations to be comprehended by the listener. Hear how in “Krypton” Daugherty takes a small motivic idea and then begins to infiltrate the entire orchestra with this idea sometimes in more traditional post-romantic sound sometimes in an almost Antheil-like Ballet Mecanique. The interior movements are a bit less interesting but the work ends with the somewhat overlong, but no less interesting “Red Cape Tango” (a tango based on “Ðies Irae“). The work can be performed in any number of combinations as each moment can stand alone, a smart move for what amounts to a 43-minute contemporary symphony. The other work on this release is inspired by trains and is essentially a 3-movement piano concerto that is fairly engaging even without its programmatic overtones. Again, this is another perfect way to hear how Daugherty’s structural sense allows listeners an entry point for a deeper appreciation of the music that has form besides just being an engaging listening experience. The live recording has some minimal audienmore....

To be fair, Daugherty doesn’t claim his symphony has anything to do with the Superman movies. It was written to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the superhero’s debut as a comic-book character, and in the symphony Superman becomes a symbol of the “energies, ambiguities, paradoxes and wit of American popular culture,” he writes. But will Daugherty quote Williams, or won’t he? He comes pretty close during the third movement, “MXYZPTLK”, (Google it—I had to) as his harmonic trajectory sounds like it might be telescoping into Williams’s opening fanfare, but Daugherty pulls away from the brink.

And how’s this for a riddle wrapped in a paradox? Williams’s catchy film score would actually, be more suited to a concert hall presentation than Daugherty’s symphony, which evokes the least appealing aspects of film music: overcooked emoting, long scene-setting passages of harmonic stasis spun out with rhythmic pounding, musical gesture without material substance. Start from the assumption, however, that the symphony is lightweight fluff and it’s an entertaining enough diversion—especially as the Nashville SO play with such rhythmic verve. The boogie-woogie energy of the piano-and-orchestra Deux ex machina, authentically realized by Terrence Wilson, makes an appealing coupling.

Die Comicfigur Superman hatte es ihm in seiner Jugend angetan, und so wollte er seinem Helden und der amerikanischen Popkultur eine Sinfonie widmen. Wie immer hat Michael Daugherty auch in dieser 1994 in der Carnegie Hall uraufgeführten „Metropolis Symphony“ die Hand am Puls der Zeit und hat eine Musik komponiert, die die Phantasie anregt und auch sehr aufregend ist. Mit ungewöhnlichen Instrumenten schickt er den Hörer auf eine abenteuerliche Reise: Vom Erzbösewicht Lex Luthor geht es zum explodierenden Planeten Krypton, von der attraktiven Lois zu Supermans letztem, in schaurigen Farben geschilderten Kampf. Die Nashville Symphony unter Giancarlo Guerrero spielt diese moderne „Symphonie fantastique“ durchweg mit Verve und Spaß am musikalischen Comicstrip.

Michael Daugherty is one of those composers whose work sharply divides opinion. I have to say I am firmly in the fan camp. This is contemporary music as fun. Not to say it does not have passages of reflective and searching beauty but the abiding impression is of a composer who revels in using a modern virtuosic orchestra to spectacular effect. The Metropolis Symphony written between 1988 and 1993 was his breakthrough work. It is not a symphony—much more a symphonic suite—but this is underlined by the fact that each of the movements is playable as an individual entity. I suspect it might almost work better like that—heard as a sequence there is a certain lack of differentiation that diminishes the overall impression of the work. But that is minor carping. This is comic strip as music (a fact wittily underlined by the album art)—not the epic action movie style of a John Williams. The opening movement Lex sets the tone for the whole disc—antiphonal police whistles, terrifyingly vertiginous solo violin writing superbly dispatched—who is that masked fiddler!?! (actually it is Mary Kathryn Van Osdale who since she gets no separate credit I assume is Concertmistress in Nashville). Listening to more Daugherty you start to recognise compositional fingerprints. He clearly enjoys writing at extremes be they dynamic, spatial (a lot of antiphonal writing and phrases being tossed across and around the orchestra) or registrational (instruments playing at their physical limits). After a nominal slow movement Krypton which grinds from the depths leading to a final apocalyptic destruction of Superman’s home planet we reach the scherzo movement. Wouldn’t you just love hearing a radio announcer trying to pronounce MXYZPTLK?! Here the antiphonal effects are provided by a pair of duelling flutes. What I like is the way Daugherty throughout uses the vocabulary of contemporary music but in a way that clearly links it to more populist musical genres as well as making it compelling listening in its own right. This carried through to the final pair of movements which I liked most of all. Oh, Lois! is marked to be played “faster than a speeding bullet” and as Daugherty explains in his liner note it “…suggests a cartoon history of mishap, screams, dialogue, crashes, and disasters, all in rapid motion.” This is a perfect succinct description for a real romp of a piece quite brilliantly performed—as is the whole disc by the Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero. Much play is made in some of the publicity material for this disc of a London performance being likened to a modern day Symphonie Fantastique. I guess in the main this is due to the dominance of the plain song Dies Irae which dominates the last movement much as it does in Berlioz’s work. That is one of the more fatuous parallels—you might as well say it’s a latter day Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances for the same reason. Metropolis has no need of any comparative crutches—it wholly succeeds on its own merits. The last movement Red Cape Tango is essentially a thirteen minute symphonic tango based in the main on the aforementioned Dies Irae chant for the dead. Quite whether it has anything at all to do with Superman I am not sure but it sustains a menacingly building tension brilliantly.

Deus ex Machina is a much later work—in essence a piano concerto from 2007. Again to quote Daugherty; “Each of the three movements is a musical response to the world of trains”. Again this is a brilliantly scored work and is more an integrated whole than the preceding symphony. If I enjoyed it slightly less overall than Metropolis this is a purely personal response. It follows a traditional fast-slow-fast format with the emotional core being carried by the central movement’s evocation of the train that carried President Lincoln’s body back to Illinois in 1865. The final movement evokes the last days of steam in America and the booklet includes a beautiful example of one of the photographs by O. Winston Link that inspired it. Pianist Terrence Wilson dispatches the awkward-sounding piano writing with great aplomb. Much of the time the solo part leads from within the orchestral texture—perhaps more sinfonia concertante than true concerto but again this is to obsess over semantics. One final interesting thought though going back to my opening comment about titles. Deus ex Machina indeed does literally translate as “God from the machine” as Daugherty points out. However the derivation of the phrase is quite different. It comes from ancient Greek theatre and meant a theatrical/plot device whereby a character or situation was suddenly radically altered by the intervention of the Gods. Literally the actor playing the God was lowered into the performing space by machine to “save the day”. This was considered a weak plot device since it allowed for massive alterations with no dramatic preparation. One could argue—and this is the interesting point—that Super heroes are the ultimate modern-day “deus ex machinas” since they can be free “with a single bound” so perhaps this title should apply more to Metropolis! Not that it matters a jot but did Daugherty pick the title because it certainly is a good title or is there more at work here than he admits to in the liner?

Naxos has been doing Daugherty proud in recent years—already their discs of his music are proving to be reference recordings (see review of 8.559165—Philadelphia Stories). Engineering and performance here is ridiculously good. If I am being very very slightly picky, the sound on the last disc—(Fire & Blood Naxos 8.559372) was a fraction better—even richer and full-blooded than this but this is very good too and excellent value at Naxos’ give-away price and 75+ minutes playing time. To be honest any of the three Naxos discs are a good entry point into his compositional world. My guess is that if you like what you hear on one you will find yourself buying all three—I have!

This newcomer gains over the Argo release (assuming you can find it) in two major respects. It is more naturally recorded, and it has a very substantial coupling in Daugherty’s piano concerto Deus ex machina. The titles of the movements—“Fast Forward”, “Train of Tears”, and “Night Steam”—give a good idea of what the music expresses, and it’s very excitingly played by pianist Terrence Wilson. As an overview of the art of one of the major voices in American music, this disc is pretty hard to beat, and if you missed the original release of the Metropolis Symphony you can stop looking and just pick up this even more compelling program.

After the virtuosic opening movement, ‘Krypton’ packs dense microtones and explosive glissandi into an otherworldy patchwork, ‘MXYYZPTLK’ explores luminous high registers, while the final ‘Red Cape Tango’ offers a schizophrenic dance which erupts in percussive fire. ‘Deus Ex Machina’ (’God in the Machine’), dedicated to the world of the railway, throws the smooth linearity of Kraftwerk and Reich’s musical train journeys off their rails, powered by clamorous-yet-rickety piano hammerings. The varied moods of the piece’s three movements demonstrate Daugherty’s versatility. The mournful strings and trumpet lament of ‘Train of Tears’ was inspired by the “lonesome train on a lonesome track” of Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train, and the manner in which this picks up steam while remaining resolutely bleak is particularly impressive. This is rich and exciting music, and Daugherty is one to watch.