Miami Herald, February 12, 2007
Lawrence A. Johnson, lajohnson@MiamiHerald.com

Yet, as demonstrated by the roiling, majestic performance delivered by conductor Alasdair Neale and the New World Symphony Friday, Corigliano's First Symphony is such a rich, deeply felt and powerful masterwork that, like any great art, it transcends its specific programmatic inspiration.

To be sure, the work captured a social-political zeitgeist at a key historic time. Audaciously scored for with massive brass and percussion batteries, the music starkly conveys the composer's anger and desperation at the AIDS epidemic and the toll it has taken on the arts and music community in particular.

Yet while it received a great deal of initial attention in part for that humanitarian aspect, Corigliano's symphony has remained in the regular repertoire for broader artistic reasons. In its blend of public oration and private sorrow, screaming fury and intimate sadness, it remains the finest American symphony of recent decades -- a shattering, deeply moving and ultimately hopeful meditation on grieving and loss.

Alasdair Neale clearly has the measure of this large, complex work, and elicited extraordinarily virtuosic playing from NWS musicians. Many conductors emphasize the flash and brilliant orchestration, and to be sure the players brought jarring ferocity and massively projected fury to the vehement rage of the opening Apologue.

Yet Neale succeeded more than most in drawing out the quiet, more interior moments: the Albeniz tango played on offstage piano, and the strange becalmed mystery and inviting solace in between the unhinged manic energy of the Tarantella. The third movement Chaconne was particularly affecting, with a plaintive cello solo rendered by Soo Jee Yang growing into a duet as other string players join the slow-moving polyphony, like the ghosts of departed friends.

The only debit on the supremely moving performance was the distracting projection of slides of the famous AIDS quilt that in part inspired the work; Corigliano's music stands up powerfully enough on its own.

Perhaps to balance the contemporary symphony, NWS offered two Romantic warhorses by Grieg and Beethoven in the first half.

Orion Weiss proved an impressive solo protagonist in Grieg's not unfamiliar Piano Concerto in A minor. Weiss is a fine musician with a superb technique and one will rarely hear this concerto performed with such polish and note-perfect precision. The 25-year-old pianist sailed through the most demanding passagework flawlessly with bracing octaves and diamond-bright articulation.

But for all the technical finish, there was something cautious and inhibited in much of his playing. Too often Weiss's performance was lacking in fire and personality, the soloist hanging back at ends of phrases when greater thrust and acceleration were needed. The impassioned, boldly projected accompaniment by Neale and the orchestra served to highlight the lack of the same qualities in their soloist.

With the greatly gifted Steven Jarvi prominent this season as conducting fellow, his appearances have been several notches above the usual obligatory curtain-raisers by young conductors. Rather than the standard emphatic-brusque approach that serves as Beethoven interpretation, Jarvi's taut, sharply honed reading of the Coriolan Overture was a revelation.

Incisive and firmly pointed with burnished lyricism in the secondary theme, Jarvi's uncommonly expressive and detailed performance discovered more details and dynamic subtleties than one ever knew existed in the music.

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Lawrence A. Johnson is The Miami Herald's classical music critic.
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