Search - Nicholas Maw, Simon Rattle, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra :: Nicholas Maw - Odyssey (2 CD Box Set) (EMI)

Turgid and Endless

Wayne A. | Belfast, Northern Ireland | 12/17/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Odyssey sure is a landmark, a titanic summation of all the confusion and ridiculousness and pointlessness of trying to be a significant symphonic composer in the late 20th Century. With all that Maw tried to say, with all the techniques he brought to bear, one wishes that he had been able to leaven the whole enterprise with some simple musicality. Listening to this heaving and ho-ing is like watching Titans wrestle--for days without conclusion, for so many days that once victory is achieved attention is already elsewhere. Arduous, geared for the self-referenced incoherent intellectual, and capable of making one really appreciate a simple Hungarian Rhapsody or two. Beethoven managed to sum up universes in one third the time, and be entertaining to boot. The piece needs to sink out of sight and exist merely as a legend to relate around campfires. It's sad that modern composers wasted so damn much time publicly gnawing away at the impossibility of being a modern composer when they could have just written some entertaining music instead. An annoying musical epitaph to the last century that apparently inspired the most fuzzy-headed and hooey-riddled review I've ever encountered of anything--a suitable intellectually elephantine companion piece that pretty much cinches my point. "...imbricated sedimentary layers"??!!!



[PS: If this is the "penultimate" musical event of the last century, what was the ultimate event? I'd hazzard a guess it was when Janet Jackson's imbricated sendimentary layer slipped at the Superbowl]"

Romantic?

L. Benjamin | Savannah, GA | 06/03/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Maw's symphony is an example of why many people hate classical music. The themes are so long and complex as to be impossible to follow; the development is not straightforward and melodic like Brahms, with whom he is often compared, yet at the same time, not "experimental" like so many of his contemporaries. The difficulty in approaching "Odyssey" is that Maw has constructed a Romantic sound-world without the expected Romantic structure. The piece doesn't progress in the expected ways; it doesn't really progress at all. The problem is that Odyssey manages to alienate both camps - it sounds too conventional for the avant-garde, but lacks the melodic flow and straightforward structure to appeal to the masses. It doesn't help that it's renowned primarily for its length, as if Maw's goal had merely been to get into the Guinness Book. He failed in that regard; the award for "longest symphony" goes to Brian's Gothic, beating Maw by a half-hour.



This recording almost destroyed everyone who came in contact with its production - lavished with unlimited resources and support, it reportedly sold only about 70 copies, of which the one I possess must be one. The piece is best appreciated on an iPod set to "shuffle," when movements come up at random, interspersed between other pieces. Listening to the entire work at one sitting, with full, focused attention, is virtually impossible - listening to one movement at a time with long breaks before the next is more realistic.



It is a difficult piece, both to perform and to listen to with the attention required. As Rattle points out in the liner notes, "It's just long and it's just difficult." It may help to imagine a world where the intervening century between Brahms and Maw never happened, where the Romantic sensibility continued to develop. "Odyssey" may be an example of the music of this imaginary world - and maybe that is where it belongs."