Marin Alsop’s well-known adventurousness was on full display Friday evening, as the former music director of the Colorado Symphony returned for the first in a pair of concerts with the orchestra.
Long a champion of popular American composer Michael Daugherty, Alsop led the symphony’s first performance of his “Time Machine for Three Conductors and Orchestras” (2003).
Daugherty, who gave a brief introduction, described it as a “3-D orchestra piece” because it calls for the symphony to be divided into three separate ensembles spread across the stage, each with its own conductor.
There is some precedent for such a piece. Hector Berlioz’s “Grande messe des morts (Requiem),” for example, requires four brass ensembles placed in different directions around the main orchestra. But Daugherty’s specific approach is definitely distinctive and new.
Because of the unusual physical configuration and the use of multiple tempos and meters simultaneously among the three groups, the composer is able to capitalize on the dimensions of both time and space.
This is no small technical feat, and it is fascinating to watch and listen as all the competing parts intricately weave together. But it’s hard not to wonder if the piece is as musically compelling as it is structurally inventive.
The boisterous second section, “Future,” with its clattering percussion, skampering brass and seemingly synthesized, high-pitched swells and slides, had some undeniably spine-tingling moments. But just how futuristic it sounds is an open question.
And the opening, largely melodic movement, “Past,” is pleasing to a point but ultimately mostly forgettable.
That said, it was impossible to fault the orchestra’s taut, incisive performance. Alsop and her two young conducting colleagues, Mihaela Cesa- Goje and Kelly Corcoran — all women, it should be noted — were in complete control all the way, with Alsop assuring everything stayed in sync.
The main feature on the second half was Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27. Alsop ably sustained the line and flow of this nearly one-hour work, drawing a suitably lush sound from the orchestra.
The program will be repeated at 7:30 p.m. today.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
