October 11, 12, and 13, 2024
Bass Hall
Fort Worth, Texas – USA
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Robert Spano, conductor; Jake Heggie, composer; c, librettist; Key’mon Murrah, countertenor; Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, choreographer/director; Courtney Cook, dancer; Bennalldra Williams, dancer.
Jake HEGGIE: Earth 2.0 (world premiere)
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major(“Eroica”)
Gregory Sullivan Isaacs | 9 DEC 2024
On Friday evening, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, music director Robert Spano, and composer Jake Heggie brought the awesome communicative power of music to reiterate increasingly disastrous predictions about global warming.
Best known for writing dramatic works, such as operas and art songs, Heggie was an obvious choice for producing this highly effective musical scold entitled Earth 2.0.
But will we listen?
Maybe delivering this dire warning with such effective musical postage will change a mind or two. It just might.
That is because Heggie’s work, really a concert opera, displays his absolute mastery of musical dramatic delivery. In a surprising turn, the text by the Iranian-American writer Anita Amirrezvani lets the Earth itself cry out for mitigation.
Earth 2.0’s thirty-five-minute running time is divided into eight progressive sections. Supertitles enabled a close understanding of the texts. Musically, Earth 2.0 sports a variety of musical influences from modernism to Broadway, with stops at folk, jazz, and the blues along the way. While some of the melodic material shows its family roots, all of it is original, nevertheless.
Heggie entrusted the role of “Earth” to the superb American countertenor Key’mon Murrah. Murrah brings a sturdy and creamy mezzo-soprano sound with a range that can thrill in the soprano’s stratospheric turf. His cri du coeur of “Cleanse Me” at the opera’s climatic moment was unforgettable. Overall, his voice is quite a remarkable instrument and wholly deserves the international praise he has garnered.
Two dancers, Courtney J. Cook and Bennalldra Williams writhed in tortuous motions, designed by choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. While it was a little hard to discern their meaning, perhaps they are us, suffering in the extreme heat, hurricanes, catastrophic floods, and uncontrollable wildfires we have foisted on ourselves.
Countertenor Key’mon Murrah and dancers Courtney Cook and Bennalldra Williams, in Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra’s world premiere of Jake Heggie’s ‘Earth 2.0’ led by FWSO music director Robert Spano. (credit: Karen Almond)
Spano was his usual solid presence on the podium with excellent ensemble, dynamic range, and dramatic pacing. The audience was captured by Earth 2.0. When the participants, including Heggie himself, took the stage at the conclusion, they were all given a well-deserved ovation.
One final thought: “Around the world, rising seas have unparalleled power to cause havoc to coastal cities and ravage coastal economies,” said António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, in a report on the crisis (2024).
The program’s second half was Beethoven’s glorious Symphony No. 3, entitled “Eroica” (“Heroic”). It was initially titled “Bonaparte,” but Beethoven changed that to “the memory of a great man” (whoever that was) after Napoleon hubristically declared himself “Emperor” in 1804.
Eroica changed the musical world forever, dwarfing everything that came before it and setting almost unattainable goals for the future. Further, it is one of the true tests of any conductor’s mettle, requiring a grand concept for the entire work and the patience to reveal it in its own time and pace. Spano was simply magnificent in this regard.
An aside: Beethoven loved the newly invented metronome because it allowed him to dictate the exact tempi he wanted for all future performers. Of course, such performers to this day have argued that the composer’s markings were inaccurate and that his metronome had to be faulty (most say it was too fast). However, historical documents show that he had his metronome repaired on several occasions to ensure accuracy. So there!
Spano took deliberate tempi throughout, which puts him on the “too fast” side of the metronome argument. However, he made a good case for his concept. While slower than some others, his tempi never dragged or felt lugubrious. In some ways, it made the symphony feel more noble and reserved than brashly heroic. In Spano’s hands, Beethoven’s accent on the second beat throughout drives the symphony forward by leaping off of the downbeat.
The second movement is a dark and dank funeral march, driven slowly forward by the rhythmic rumbling wheels of the wagon that bears the body of the departed. Spano kept the serious nature of the procession present even when Beethoven tried to lighten the mood. The next movement, a Scherzo, vibrated with energy without losing its serious nature. However, the horn section took a moment to revel in the famous central (Trio) section.
The last movement has always been controversial. Does a set of variations on a more lighthearted theme belong at the conclusion of such a monumental work? Spano declared it to be exactly what was needed. With its repeated three-note “knocking” motto, the theme was a favorite of the composer’s. It originally appeared in his ballet The Creatures of Prometheus and was a treasured theme for other uses and improvisations at his public recitals.
Beethoven’s textbook set of variations in this final movement is complex, erudite, and magnificent in both concept and execution. Spano merged them together with minimal spacing to carry us along to a fitting and deliberate, heroic ending. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra: fwsymphony.org
- Robert Spano: robertspanomusic.com
- Jake Heggie: jakeheggie.com
- Anita Amirrezvani: anitaamirrezvani.com
- Key’mon Murrah: keymonmurrahcountertenor.com/
- Jawole Willa Jo Zollar: urbanbushwomen.org/the-founder
Read more by Gregory Sullivan Isaacs.
