Peter Child: Reviews: Jubal Composed 2001. Excerpted from (The Boston Globe, December 11, 2001)
Many people who go to the MIT Symphony's concerts have probably thought to themselves: This orchestra must have a higher collective IQ than any other. This is probably true. In any case, bright, conscientious, spirited performances are the ensemble's proven norm. Saturday night at Kresge Auditorium you also got the distinct impression - not for the first time - that the thornier the assignment, the better this group likes it. Not that ''thorny'' is the first word you'd think to apply to Peter Child's ''Jubal'' (2001), which its composer describes as ''essentially a symphony in four short movements compressed into one.'' Your reviewer's own list would start with ''feisty,'' ''inventive,'' ''highly colored,'' and ''purposeful.'' Roughly speaking, what the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra does (likewise Hindemith's own Concerto for Orchestra and his Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Weber - dazzlers all, with heart and brains and soul) is what ''Jubal'' seems to have in its sights. The above-named are also very gratifying to play - once, of course, you're past their formidable technical challenges. These players obviously had the notes within their grasp from the word go. And the enjoyment they took in the piece's peculiar modus operandi - a toccata-like, one-damned-thing-after-another release of sonic energy, with (implied) analytical notes attached - this you could read in their faces. Early on in ''Jubal,'' Child has the orchestra making
like a very elaborate windup toy. Then, before you realize it, it has morphed
itself into a kind of infernal machine, pulling up the rugs, terrifying the
cats, and hurling the furniture out the window. Not long thereafter (and a
good thing, too) comes a stern dose of character-building orchestral
counterpoint (the fugato lives, it rules! you're told). And so it goes. Many
times en route the composer reveals that he also knows a thing or two about
audience psychology. Just when you're thinking maybe he should stop now, he
does stop, ever so elegantly. In a juster world, ''Jubal'' would immediately
be making its way onto the major-league big-orchestra circuit. Let it
be reported, in the meantime, that Dante Anzolini and the young men and women
of the orchestra gave it their all.
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