World Trade Center attack, Music Director Alan Gilbert arranged a joint commission with the Shanghai Symphony. The four-song cycle never names the attacks directly, but offers them up as one float in a parade of gruesome history. Using poetry of destruction, Corigliano avoids the indelible September 11 images we carry, instead turning his attention to human horrors from the Trojan War (Homer), an Eighth Century war on China’s Great Wall (Li Po), and World War II (Czeslaw Milosz). The title poem by EY “Yip” Harburg is wistful American-lite.

Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe (an inspired choice) sang the cycle with slow, hovering power and special strength in her middle range.  Milosz’s ‘Song on the End of the World’, translated from the Polish by his son, portrays an ordinary morning of stillness and bright haze: “No one believes it is happening now.”

Its feel of prologue is like the plaintive opening bassoon solo in The Rite of Spring—bees, clover, a violin. Interludes of two notes repeat as an oscillating second, and the vocal line has an occasional tritone, which returns in the last poem, as does the clover. Lowest strings murmur.
‘Patroclus’, by contrast, is a horrifying battle description from the Iliad—a massacre, victim by gory victim: “He crowded corpse on corpse on the earth that rears us all.” War drums and sounds of violence—whoops, slapstick shots, bellowing horns—match graphic descriptions of slaughter.
Li Po’s ‘War South of the Great Wall’ presents a battle scene from a distance, but it still comes out bloody, with drums, penetrating low brass, bassoon, vibes, and more tritones reminiscent of Britten’s War Requiem.  In Harburg’s ‘One Sweet Morning’, autumn looks toward spring: “This is the cry of life the winter world over.” It affirms that “spring will bloom” and “peace will come”.

Musically, the cycle doesn’t have a traditional ending; but, given human nature, what are the odds we will see that sweet morning?  Juicy texts and brilliant construction make One Sweet Morning the best thing the prolific, acclaimed Corigliano has written. At 73 he has sidestepped or outgrown traps his music can fall into; the cycle, by turns horrifying and heartrending, is evocative in melody and harmony but never maudlin. Its orchestration is grand but controlled, its scope epic without bombast or pretense.

Gilbert is emerging as a creative program shaper. Identifying Barber as an American conservative, he opened the Philharmonic season a week earlier with the The School for Scandal Overture, and began the Corigliano concert with another early Barber piece, the short Essay No. 1. The orchestra sounded light and clear, with shimmering string unison and typical big low chords. 50 years ago I thought this piece harsh; now it’s luminous.

Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7, which concluded the program, is better suited than other works to Gilbert’s large conducting gestures.  Composed before Dvorak’s American experience brought his style to its full glory, its pleasing tunes and Wagnerian touches don’t reflect the same spirit as his last symphonies and Cello Concerto. Critics stared with glazed eyes, and some in the audience nodded off. People who came for a new tradition are ready to move forward.