JOHN CORIGLIANO (b.1938): A Dylan Thomas Trilogy.

Description: Dylan Thomas' rich, evocative imagery is a gift to the composer bold enough to set it in music as exuberantly colorful and lively as the poetry itself. Corigliano has risen to the challenge in this massive symphonic canvas, employing the full resources of choir, soloists and large orchestra. Alternately powerful exultant and defiant, and pastoral, albeit darkened by the shadow of mortality, Corigliano reflects these many moods in some of his most expressive music. The lengthy final movement is an autobiographical requiem, and the music underlines this, lamenting, though not without protest and robust anger, returning to the vigorous music of the Prologue for formal symmetry before dying out in an atmosphere of reminiscence. Corigliano's idiom is grounded in tonality, with a modernist touch of the composer who knows how to communicate with audiences of today in accessible terms. Highly recommended. Texts included. Sir Thomas Allen (baritone), Ty Jackson (boy soprano), John Tessier (tenor), Nashville Symphony Chorus and Orchestra; Leonard Slatkin.