Matthew Aucoin’s Orphic Moments speaks with a distinctive voice

Earlier this week Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice had its first performance at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. It is the second opera by a contemporary composer to be performed there this season, which is quite a statement from a company that has so long been rooted in tradition.

At just over 30, Aucoin can count this an important feather in his cap as one of the most interesting young American composers. He has built up a good range of works over the past decade, so this new survey of his music is well timed.

Each of the seven pieces on the two-disc set is receiving its first recording. Performances are shared by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and American Modern Opera Company, the latter of which Aucoin was co-founder, and are split into equal halves, orchestral and chamber.

The music immediately speaks with a distinctive voice. American minimalism lurks in the background, but Aucoin’s music has moved on, refining its sound world into a crystal-clear transparency, where decorative tinsel shimmers and pounding, repeated chords coalesce with mounting excitement.

All of this can be heard in the arresting Piano Concerto (2016) with Conor Hanick as pianist. Counter-tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo is soloist in the uncanny emotional dilemma of The Orphic Moment and, setting a section from Dante’s Purgatorio, the seductive and ambiguous This Earth. Everybody comes together in the coruscating Gallup (Na’nízhoozhí) (2021), originally a mini online film, rooted in Native America and a captivating piece.

★★★★☆

‘Matthew Aucoin: Orphic Moments’ is released by BMOP