David Del Tredici: Child Alice
BMOP/sound

Gil Rose, the BMOP's conductor and artistic director, calls David Del Tredici's orchestral epic Child Alice (1977-1981) the quintessential release in the BMOP/sound catalogue, and it would be hard to disagree when the release symbolizes everything the orchestra and its label stand for: adventurous programming of new and twentieth-century works, and often ones deserving of greater representation. It's some kind of crime to discover, for example, that since it was completed Child Alice has received but two live performances, its 1986 Carnegie Hall premiere and BMOP's 2016 presentation. How could it be that a work of such magnificence has been performed so seldom?

Certainly BMOP's double-CD set—the first time the work in its entirety has been commercially released—presents a most compelling argument on behalf of Del Tredici's Neo-Romantic masterwork, especially when the performance of this accessible yet complex piece makes for exhilarating listening. Recorded in March 2016, the two hours-plus opus isn't, however, the only Alice-themed work the composer's created. Many appeared between the first, Pop-pourri, in 1968, and Cabbages and Kings in 1996. Final Alice (1974-75) brought him wider attention and, more critically, prompted conductor Leonard Slatkin to commission a new work from the composer. In response, he orchestrated In Memory of a Summer Day, the hour-long first part of the then still-developing score for Child Alice, which was subsequently premiered in 1980 by Slatkin with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. (As pivotal to his career as the Alice works are, they're not the whole picture: earlier pieces focus on James Joyce, whereas many that came later celebrate his gay sexuality.)

The tonal character of Child Alice didn't come about as a reactionary stance against serialism, but simply because tonality was deemed a better fit for a project based on Carroll's whimsical classic. Child Alice is nonetheless an audacious and expressive creation, even if it is grounded in traditional harmony. On structural grounds, the text used for Part 1: In Memory of a Summer Day is the prefatory poem to Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, “Child of the Pure Unclouded Brow,” which soprano Courtenay Budd delivers in the opening and closing sections, “Simple Alice” and “Ecstatic Alice”; separating them is the orchestral section “Triumphant Alice.” The work's second part, which received its first performance in 1986, also comprises three sections, in this case “Quaint Events,” “Happy Voices,” and “All in the Golden Afternoon,” the latter a colossal thirty-five minutes. The text used for the second part is the prefatory poem to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, “All in the Golden Afternoon,” and it too is sung twice. Like “Triumphant Alice,” “Happy Voices” is an elaborate central movement for orchestra alone. As epic as the work is (its score apparently totals almost a thousand pages), it's rooted in two themes, a lyrical one in the opening part and a rollicking tune in the second.

After a tone-establishing introduction whose intensifying swirl evokes the dreamlike dazzle of Carroll's storyline, “Simple Alice” adds an arresting soprano cadenza before moving onto the lilting rendering of the poem and the first voicing of the motif pervading the piece. The unbounded, quasi-ecstatic spirit of the work is already present in these lyrical opening minutes, in particular when the voice ascends upwards; audible too in the early going are opulent passages hinting at Mahler and Richard Strauss as influences. Tumultuous episodes appear, their circus-like wildness an effective musical distillation of the story's oft-madcap quality. With the music seductive and Budd warbling like a joyful songbird, it hardly surprises that In Memory of a Summer Day was rapturously received upon its first appearance. After horns and percussion inaugurate “Triumphant Alice” raucously, the yearning central motif re-emerges, first voiced by strings and then subjected to all manner of dizzying variations. Dynamic contrast is pushed to an extreme, with delicate and high-intensity episodes alternating (wailing sirens even appear). “Ecstatic Alice” begins by reiterating the introductory swirl of “Simple Alice” before settling into a second treatment of the text, this one conceived by the composer as an expression of Carroll's adult perspective; in being presented as a rhapsodic love song from him to Alice, the closing section spirals to such Wagnerian heights in places, it verges on tortured. It's hardly a one-note affair, though, as serenading passages surface too, and it's also crowned by a magnificent vocal by Budd during the closing minutes.

In the first of the second part's sections, “Quaint Events,” Budd quickly digs into the “All in the golden afternoon” text alongside a rollicking, half-waltz backdrop. A sense of disorientation infuses the music, which thereby conveys effectively the drowsiness Carroll and the children might have experienced during that hot afternoon. The composer's imagination runs rampant, the result a boisterous and sometimes clamorous section teeming with ideas and moods. The all-orchestral “Happy Voices” separates the vocal sections with an ultra-elaborate fugal structure. In this most tumultuous section, instrumental forces move towards a crescendo and eventually arrive at an explosive Quodlibet where multiple themes converge. As the music hurtles on ever faster, melodies strain towards resolution but resist doing so, leaving the listener in a state of vertigo. “Happy Voices” gradually decompresses, setting the stage for the work's final section, “All in the Golden Afternoon” and the soprano's final appearance. Though the turbulence of the central section isn't entirely absent, the closing one feels a tad more stable, especially when the opening aria reinstates the languorous mood that figured earlier. In combining that tone with slow, lyrical moments that follow, Del Tredici emphasizes that rapture and regret are equally integral to his treatment, the former feeling associated with the joyful summer's day and the latter with the recognition that all that remains thereafter for the adult is a memory. The impression left as this incredible work ends is of a fantastical journey having reached its destination, however circuitous the route required to get there.

April 2021