Still, Aucoin’s restraint in dealing with these massive forces is one of the most striking things about “Heath,” whose four sections, played without a break, exude a confident, brooding reserve. With bell-ringers, grim chords and an awkward melody, the opening is immediately reminiscent of Mussorgsky’s ‘Boris Godunov’, yet another tale of a king gone mad.
This first installment, “The Divided Kingdom,” showcases Aucoin’s talent for creating orchestral textures that are simultaneously granitic and flickering, like fast-moving storm clouds. Sharp blasts of snare drum underline a gradual increase of power in a sombre, vast landscape of solemn brass and a boom in the strings, which melt into an almost Tchaikovsky-romantic swing.
A slightly faster second movement, named after Lear’s Fool, is pierced by the harsh, maniacal playfulness of whistling – hinting at the scores for Kurosawa’s filmed Shakespearean adaptations – before a short, sparse interlude inspired by the raucous regret of the blinded Gloucester. The fourth movement, “With a Dead March” (the piece’s designation for the eventual mass exit), builds in dense, steady waves before suddenly receding to a subtle, uneasy yet elegant end of rustling percussion.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the music director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, deserves credit for consistently leading the works of this gifted composer with both organizations over the years. (Aucoin is currently working on an adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s “Demons,” slated for the Met.)
Despite being clear and energetic on stage, Nézet-Séguin was unable to generate the sharp brilliance needed to make the well-known Bernstein and Tchaikovsky pieces on the program memorable again. Neither was slow, exactly, yet they felt a little tired and frantically hazy, with horns and trumpets faltering at the end of a long season. The Tchaikovsky lacked the impassioned opulence that is this score’s raison d’être.