Composer Michael Daugherty is among the most active and prolific of today's living composers. His works are frequently performed in all of the world's major orchestras and new commissions by these orchestras and soloists are popping up all the time. This Naxos album features three such commissions for the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra. First on the program is the highly engaging, instantly accessible "Fire and Blood," a work for solo violin and orchestra inspired by the Diego Rivera murals painted in the Detroit Institute of Arts. The album's liner notes do an excellent job of tying in the visual component to what Daugherty has composed. Violinist Ida Kavafian, who is quite skilled at delivering "fire and blood" in her playing, joins longtime music director
Neeme Järvi in this riveting live performance. Both Kavafian and the
DSO play as if this piece has been in the violin's repertoire for centuries; the intensely driven and complicated rhythms and tight and precise balance allow soloist and orchestra to alternately take the lead without become submissive, and wonderful textures and tone colors are achieved, lending to the union of visual and performance arts. The program continues with MotorCity [sic] Triptych, a play on words that not only references the three-paneled art form, but also a "TripTick" road-map produced by the American Automobile Association. Here again, Daugherty's use of complex multimeters and polytonality are ideally suited for the mechanistic subject matter; the
DSO continues to rise to the challenge with a performance that is filled with abandon and vitality. The program concludes with Raise the Roof for timpani and orchestra. While this may be the least provocative piece on the disc, it puts a raucous period on the end of a very exciting album.