The Orpheus Oracle, an entry in Vienna Modern Masters' Music from Six Continents series, should have been called Music from Those Who Escaped Cincinnati. It features music by
Darrell Handel, retired composition professor from the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music, and Gerhard Samuel, conductor emeritus of the Cincinnati Philharmonia. By seeming coincidence, both composers share an affinity for the legend of Orpheus and it informs three of the five works presented here.
Handel's Orpheus Left His Heart (1997) is written as a showcase for his daughter, harpist
Suzanne Handel, who is a fine player but is not given much to do here. She plays in the works' opening and in its nearly identical conclusion, and has a spot or two in the long middle section, all development but with no theme. Orpheus Oracle (1998) is performed by the Oronoque Trio and is largely based on the previous piece; both works are based on a dreary, rainy day modal set that sounds near tonal but goes nowhere. At one point the harp in Orpheus Left His Heart gingerly approaches a traditional cadence, almost as if embarrassed to do so, and is answered by a veritable flurry of further ambiguity.
Samuel's music is barely more interesting, built in a solid, though academically centered base within the heritage of the Second Viennese School. Remembering Orpheus, scored for saxophone and orchestra, has top-notch tutti writing for the orchestra, but Samuel has no feeling for the capabilities of the sax, utilizing it for trombone-like glissandi and broken up, single-note patterns. Samuel's sax writing is more fluid in the chamber-sized Hyacinth from Apollo, but that work is undone by the totally thankless and unmusical vocal setting of Jack Larson's elegant poetry.
That leaves Requiem for Survivors, a 1974 orchestral work premiered in Los Angeles by
Zubin Mehta based on the first nine measures of the "Lacrimosa" from
Mozart's Requiem -- a piece that reminds one why new music once drove scores of listeners out of the concert halls. It is cynical, detached, obscure, and is loaded with contemporary music clichés, in addition to being overlong, dull, and inconclusive.