Product Description

Inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of
Superman's first appearance in the
comics, Metropolis Symphony has been
performed by orchestras all over the
world. Hailed by the London Times as a
'Symphonie Fantastique for our times,'
Metropolis Symphony is a musical
response to the myth of Superman,
expressing the energies, ambiguities,
paradoxes, and wit of American
popular culture. Deus ex Machina is a
piano concerto inspired by trains of the
future and past: Fast Forward
re-creates the machine-like rhythms of
modern trains admired by the Italian
futurists; Train of Tears recalls
Abraham Lincoln's funeral train; Night
Steam evokes O. Winston Link's
historic photographs of steam
locomotives rumbling and whistling
their way into extinction.

Track Listing

1. Lex
2. Krypton
3. MXYZPTLK
4. Oh, Lois!
5. Red Cape Tango
6. Fast Forward
7. Train of Tears
8. Night Steam

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42551 in Music
• Released on: 2009-09-29
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .29 pounds

Audiophile Audition, John Sunier, October 15, 2009
Michael Daugherty, originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has become one of the most commissioned, programmed and recorded living composers on the U.S. concert scene today. Among his teachers have been Ligeti, Boulez, Roger Reynolds and Gil Evans. One critic referred to his "maverick imagination," which has produced works based on Elvis, Jackie O, and other beacons of 20th century pop culture. Including Superman in the second of these new discs. Daugherty grew up in a family of musicians of all sorts and has been able to bring the pop/jazz world into his compositions in innovative ways, giving them instant appeal to many listeners. The first of these two CDs is tied in with three works commissioned and premiered by the Detroit Symphony during the composer's four years of residency there. Diego Rivera's huge fresco and the paintings of his wife Frida Kahlo inspired Fire and Blood. The Rivera murals partly inspired Daugherty due to the artist himself predicting the possibility of turning his artwork into music. The first movement is Volcanos, referring to the environment of Mexico City, where he was born, as well as their association with revolution. The second movement, River Rouge, deals with the Riveras' visit to the Ford factory at River Rouge, as well as the suffering of Frida with her lifelong medical problems. Assembly Line, the last movement, stresses a perpetual motion theme in picturing the collaboration of man and machine, which Rivera saw as bringing liberation for the workers.

MotorCity Triptych is a sort of musical travelog in three movements. The first honors the Motown recordings which were central to the composer's youth. The second is Pedal-to-the-Metal - a high-speed drive along Michigan Avenue in the world's auto capital. Rosa Parks Boulvard, the third movement, has solos by three trombonists: Michael Becker, Kenneth Thompkins and Randall Hawes. Daugherty's inspirations for the timpani/orchestra work were Notre Dame cathedral, the Empire State Building, and other architectural wonders. He designed the work to give the timpanist long expressive melodies not usually hear from the timpani.

This year is the 50th anniversary of Superman's first appearance in the comics, so naturally Daugherty has to create a "symphonie fantastique for our times." His response to the myth of Superman expresses the energies, ambiguities, paradoxes and wit of American pop culture. The work's five movements cover various elements of the Superman myth: Lex, the first, represents Lex Luthor, the hero's main villain. No. 2, Krypton, is the exploding planet from which Superman is launched as an infant. The third movement is MXYZPTLK, a wild imp from another dimension who occasionally threatens Superman's Metropolis. Lois Lane, the newspaper report who is Clark Kent's love interest, is focused on in the fourth movement, and the suite concludes with Red Cape Tango, which uses the well-known Dies Irae theme in a death chant conceived as a tango. Deux Ex Machina - meaning "god from the machine" - is Daugherty's three-movement piano concerto capturing the world of trains. The first movement synthesizers various avant-garde ideas about trains into the composer's own "musical manifesto." The second movement is Train of Tears, and refers to the slow-moving funeral train after Lincoln's assassination. Night Stream, the last movement, is about the few steam locomotives left on American railroads after the 1950s, and receives here its world premiere recording.

All of these are accessible and fun works which should have a wide appeal, and they are superbly performed and recorded.

Infodad.com, October 8, 2009
There have been many obituaries written for the symphony - dating back to the years when Beethoven's were considered unsurpassable (and his Ninth was deemed virtually unplayable). But the form is so attractive to so many composers that even those for whom Beethoven's shadow seemed longest (think Brahms) eventually overcame their misgivings and tried their own essays in symphonic form. The pattern continues even today: what more can there possibly be to say in a symphony? Yet the form's inherent adaptability, added to the thoughtfulness of some composers in redefining and expanding what the term can mean, has led to startlingly varied symphonic productions throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. One of the cleverest recent approaches to the symphony is Michael Daugherty's - although purists will argue, with some justification, that his Metropolis Symphony is really a suite, its movements related in concept but not musically. Indeed, Daugherty himself says the five movements can be played independently. Matters of definition aside, Metropolis Symphony is a work of appealing sound, interesting instrumentation, and cleverly interconnected themes (not musical themes but programmatic ones); and it is great fun to listen to - a statement that cannot always be made about 20th-century symphonies. The work is a non-meditative meditation on the Superman ethos. Daugherty started composing it in 1988 to mark the 50th anniversary of the iconic comic-book hero; he completed it in 1993; and it was first performed in 1994. It has received a number of performances since, and it deserves to: this is appealing music that speaks to a peculiarly American cultural icon using a firm grasp of compositional techniques and keeping one eye (or ears) always on pleasing the audience. Quite an accomplishment. The styles of the five movements vary widely: "Lex" (for archvillain Lex Luthor) features perpetuum mobile triplets on a solo violin (well played here by Mary Kathryn Van Osdale) ; "Krypton" (Superman's home planet) combines eerie glissandi with increasingly ominous fire bells; "MXYZPTLK" (for the fifth-dimensional imp who troubles Superman periodically) includes antiphonally placed flute soloists and an emphasis on all the instruments' higher registers; "Oh, Lois!" is a virtuosic and very funny tribute to Superman's many rescues of Lois Lane; and "Red Cape Tango," inspired by Superman's death (and later resurrection), sounds like a stylized fight with interpolations of the Medieval Dies irae. Giancarlo Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony really go to town with this music - hearing it is an exhilarating experience. The symphony is paired with a sort-of piano concerto, written in 2007, called Deus ex Machina. This is Daugherty's three-movement tribute to the world of trains, from the future they once seemed to represent (first movement) to their funereal role (second movement, which recalls the train that carried assassinated President Lincoln's body home for burial) to the end of the steam-locomotive era (third movement). The sound pictures here are lovingly painted, the piano writing is forthright and clever, and the work as a whole is appealing both as entertainment and as an extended meditation on a once-crucial form of transportation that has largely fallen by the wayside in the United States (although scarcely so in other countries).

Gapplegate Music Review, Grego Edwards, October 26, 2009
Michael Daugherty's music seems to be widely performed on the concert circuit these days. Perhaps that's so for two reasons: a.) His music is accessible in a kind of Populist way. And his eclecticism helps his music sound a bit as if you've heard it before, somewhere. b.) His music often uses as launching points literal themes that are not stuffy or academic. (Mind you, I have nothing against stuffy and academic, either.)

One can certainly see both of these factors at work in a second Naxos release devoted to his orchestral music. On it we find Giancarlo Guerrero conducting the Nashville Symphony in spirited performances of two works that span a period beginning in 1988 and ending in 2007.

The first piece, Metropolis Symphony (1988-93), celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first Superman comics with a substantial orchestral work. Daugherty states in the liner notes that the symphony is a "musical response to the myth of Superman." Like very well received works in the standard repertoire, The Planets and Symphony Fantastique come to mind (and like the latter, interestingly there are quotations from Dies Irae), the listener is given a concrete handle on the music via accessible subject matter.

This alone would not not be sufficient to make the Metropolis Symphony worth your listening time. Daugherty's masterful orchestrational talents shine throughout the work. It's bright, colorful, even exciting music that comes to vivid life on the aural soundstage of this CD.

The same can be said of the more recent (2007) work Deus Ex Machina for Piano and Orchestra. This time the jumping off point is the world of trains. In keeping with the inspiration for this work, the music here has a bit more power and sensory-motor bite than the Metropolis Symphony. Terrence Wilson performs the part of the Machina piano protagonist with drive and masterful execution. This is music of great motion and the piano seems like the locomotive that drags the orchestra along, sometimes at a furious clip.

Anyone looking for orchestral showcase works that convert the vast sonoric resources of the modern symphony orchestra into bright digital sound will welcome this recording. There is exhilaration and much pleasure to be had!

Customer Reviews

A home run for Nashville/Guerrero!
This disc is fantastic: 2 energetic pieces by a gifted American composer, performed by an excellent orchestra under an exciting new conductor. Sonically, the performances are beautifully captured, top to bottom, and the recording sounds great on 5-channel surround. The nuances the composer points out in the liner notes are easily heard in the mix, and the Nashville Symphony's sound is balanced and full. Just a beautiful recording, and an excellent addition to a growing and impressive catalog from Music City's excellent orchestra.

As for the pieces themselves, the Metropolis Symphony, though not program music, certainly evokes images of the mythology to which it pays tribute: sounds of a busy city, soaring melodic lines, bright horns, and robust orchestration. It is beautifully and ably written.

The piano concerto, Deus Ex Machina, is another brilliantly rendered composition--in response, in the composer's words, to the world of trains. The highlight here is part II: The Train of Tears, "music for a slow-moving funeral train"--specifically, the train that carried Abraham Lincoln's body from Washington, DC, to its final resting place in Illinois. The movement is dark, brooding, lonely, and fatalistic. Terrence Wilson (piano) plays very well throughout the whole emotional and stylistic range of the concerto.

Mythic music with bells and whistles
All I knew of the Metropolis Symphony by Michael Daugherty was that it was written in 1988 as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Superman's first appearance in comics. So I began with Daugherty's liner notes: "The symphony is a rigorously structured non-programmatic work, expressing the energies, ambiguities, paradoxes, and wit of American popular culture." To test this I put down the notes, plugged in to my iPod, and went for a 42-1/2 minute walk in the rain. My findings from the first listen? Energies? Check! Ambiguities, paradoxes? Check! Wit? Check!

Maybe, though, Daugherty saved some of the wit for the sentence I quoted above, for as mythic as this music is, it's still programmatic. The second movement, for example, is a representation of the trickster MXYZPTLK (the second in music history if you count Bruckner's 7th Symphony, which I don't). The imp's multi-dimensional nature is mirrored in the aural spaces Daugherty creates. That's a much more sophisticated programme than Carl Stalling's Looney Tunes scores (or Beethoven's Scene at the Brook), but it's a programme nevertheless.

A non-musical aside: Daugherty assumes that the Superman myth is particularly American, though all Canadians know that Superman was first drawn by Torontonian Joe Shuster. Clark Kent's first job was with the Metropolis Daily Star, whose name was taken from the Toronto Daily Star where Shuster worked, and the Metropolis skyline was modelled after that of Toronto. Perhaps Superman is American, but Clark Kent is Canadian. Obvious, eh?

The other work on the disc, Deus ex Machina, is shorter but more profound, and more in line with Fire & Blood, which I reviewed last month. Both works make reference to the visual arts: Fire & Blood to Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo, and Deus ex Machina to the Italian Futurists. Daugherty's three train pictures in the form of a piano concerto are in the honourable tradition of Honegger and Villa-Lobos, and will probably bear more repetition than the Symphony. The Naxos disc shows off the splendid Nashville Symphony, who shone in their 2005 recording of the Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras (also for Naxos), music as rhythmically complex, if not always as boisterous, as this. The orchestral and solo playing (by pianist Terrence Wilson) is excellent. Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero seems to have everything in hand, and Naxos has engineered and packaged another winner here.

IS IT A BIRD? IS IT A PLANE? IT'S MICHAEL DAUGHERTY!
For some reason, I mistakenly connected Michael Daugherty with the Bang On A Can crew. He is post-modern, though, in the sense of using materials from everywhere. From Wikipedia, the background details most revealing about his music was that he learned to play piano himself ("Alexander's Ragtime Band") via the family player-piano, that he wanted to become a composer after hearing a performance of Sam Barber's Piano Concerto, studied with Charles Wuorinen, and had a stint at IRCAM where he encountered Gerard Grisey and Frank Zappa.

Leonard Bernstein told him to combine American popular with concert music. He worked on his Yale dissertation about the connection between Mahler and Ives, and Emerson and Goethe. Well-rounded is what I'm aiming at, musically and otherwise. Clearly you'd want to be seated next to him at a dinner party. But how goes the music?

Wonderfully! This will be on my 2009 Best List. The slipcase cover of Metropolis Symphony loudly declares its intent and content: a red-caped Superman-like character in rapid flight over a metropolitan skyline. The composition is in five movements, they are non-programmatic, and each may be performed (or, at home, played) individually.

"Lexx" opens with a police whistle; right away there's trouble afoot. There's only the broadest minimalist reference of a broadly repeating phrase, and just for a minute or so.

"Krypton" opens with a police siren, then darkly ominous strings, very realistically captured fire bells, triangles and other percussive materials. Think: Appalachian Spring gone askew thanks to spiraling string glissandi and Mary Kathryn Van Osdale's violin, ending with a siren going off in homage to Varèse's Ionisation.

"MXYZPTLK" is more chamber-like with its flutes and piccolo and ends with a crack. "Oh, Lois!" offers swirling strings and that wind-swirly-whistling thing (forgive my technical exactitude), following by a manic brass chase that starts to sound like the well-known bumblebee flight, then quickly shifts off into it's own wild-ride.

"Red Cape Tango" is appropriately slow and insinuating, with a reprise of the previous bells.

Deus ex Machina for Piano and Orchestra: It begins with Henry Cowell-like strums inside the piano, followed by an intricate, rapidly-ascending line that simultaneously recalls Nancarrow and ragtime. The orchestra with piano is truly grand without being grandiose or bombastic; a great accomplishment. The piano solos evoke tender emotions, until it thunders up spiral staircases to Hollywood action-film evocation. You hear Barber, you hear lots of Bernstein, some Rachmaninoff in the piano.

Each of the movements is meant to be "a musical response to the world of trains." You already know the famous works which do this.
The first movement, "Fast Forward," stands up to all of them. It's very loud, exciting stuff, inspired by Italian futurist painters. The "Train of Tears" uses "Taps," what the composer refers to as his own "ghost melody" and other elements to evoke Lincoln's funeral train.

The closer, "Night Steam," uses 20th Century American-style rhythms and speed in response to photographs of the motion of the last steam locomotives. Terrence Wilson does a fine job with the modernist piano part; I'd love to hear him tackle a Rachmaninoff concerto or the Barber sonata.

I'm not rushing this review for musical lack of quality, but rather, the adrenaline each work brought out in me forces me to walk away from the keyboard now, sit in front of the audio system, and enjoy another go-round for pure, close-listening pleasure.

If you've read this far, just get it. Worth more than twice the cost of Naxos' list price of nine bucks, available in NYC for seven or less. I look forward to hearing more of his Naxos recordings, and seeing his opera Jackie-O.

Editor, AcousticLevitation dot org