“This weekend’s Detroit Symphony Orchestra concerts might be titled ‘Beethoven and the Big Question,’ ” writes Lawrence B. Johnson in Thursday’s (4/19) Detroit News (Michigan). On the program are Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy for piano chorus and orchestra, with pianist Jeffrey Biegel and the Choral Union of the University Musical Society, and William Bolcom’s cantata Prometheus, the “Big Question work” at the program’s center. “Charm and sweetness have nothing to do with Prometheus, based on Lord Byron’s poem about the mythic figure who stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. … In a program note for the work’s world premiere by the Pacific Symphony in 2010, Bolcom describes the myth of Prometheus as ‘a perfect metaphor for our time. … To much of the rest of the world, the West is Prometheus, whose fire has fueled the technological expansion of the last 500 years—electricity, steam, oil, the atom and the computer.… We are now all Prometheus, chained to our rock of technological dependency.’ … Pianist Jeffrey Biegel, who instigated the commission of Prometheus by several orchestras including the Detroit Symphony, says Bolcom’s work is ‘very dark and filled with premonition. … Yet Prometheus’ godly crime was to be kind, to help humans.’ ”
Posted April 20, 2012
