FORT WORTH — News reports these days seem to validate scientists’ predictions of weather extremes intensified by global warming. To address these issues in music, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra commissioned Jake Heggie’s Earth 2.0, for solo voice, dancers and orchestra. With music director Robert Spano conducting, the new work was premiered Friday night at Bass Performance Hall, on a program also including Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.
One of the most performed contemporary American composers, Heggie has had considerable exposure around here. The Dallas Opera commissioned and premiered his Moby-Dick and Great Scott; Fort Worth Opera has performed Dead Man Walking, Three Decembers and Again.
Earth 2.0 was composed for countertenor Key’mon Murrah, who performed it Friday. Jawole Willa Jo Zollar supplied choreography.
The libretto, by Iranian-American writer Anita Amirrezvani, imagines the solo voice as Earth challenged by human neglect and abuse. The eight sections of the 37-minute work were identified on supertitles, which also displayed the texts.
The orchestral writing is an expressive mélange of sounds and styles. Wind twitters evoke songbirds, but dissonant, stabbing dance music suggests forests of concrete rising beneath their flights; a suggestion of a spiritual supplies refuge. A sultry, bluesy trumpet solo (played by Kyle Sherman) represents Earth’s evolving artistry.
Orchestral wreathings wrap around a wish for human care — and imagined extraplanetary adventures. To a flute solo (played by Jake Fridkis), words recall birds’ evolution from dinosaurs and their function as pollinators. “The Admirer” celebrates human bodies in jazzy music à la West Side Story Bernstein.
The final section, “The Cleanse,” calls for a purge of abuse by extreme heatwaves and hurricanes. A bright light shone on the Texas flag on the right of the stage, before a blue wash swept over everything. Make of that what you will.
At first exposure, Amirrezvani’s poetry seemed a bit precious. But Heggie effectively exploited Murrah’s powerful countertenor voice and vivid delivery, with blazing high notes in soprano range. I’d be interested to hear the work sung by a dramatic mezzo-soprano. Ably marshalled by Spano, FWSO musicians gave an arresting account of an orchestral score that might be adapted into an appealing symphonic suite.
Downstage, dancers Courtney J. Cook and Bennalldra Williams vividly sprang, grasped and scuttled to Zollar’s choreography, and Krista Billings did telling things with lighting. An enthusiastic ovation brought the whole creative team onstage for bows.
Old notions that Beethoven’s metronome markings for his symphonies are mistaken or impractical have been disproved by conductors as varied as David Zinman, Roger Norrington and John Eliot Gardiner. But Spano’s Eroica was consistently and considerably slower than the markings, yielding a symphony less heroic than comfortably sturdy.
Instead of a sinewy hero we got a well-fed establishment figure, draped in a toga and set on a pedestal. The orchestra played well — oboist Jennifer Corning Lucio elegantly in the Funeral March, horns dramatically in the trio of the scherzo — but where was the excitement, the edginess?
Details
Repeats at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Bass Performance Hall, Fourth and Commerce streets, Fort Worth. $26 to $99. 817-665-6000, fwsymphony.org.
