Musical Setting for Blake’s Songs Performed
From an April 12 review by John Rockwell in The New York Times:
“ANN ARBOR, Mich., April 9 — William Bolcom’s gigantic, well-more-than-two-hour setting of William Blake’s complete ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience’ poetic cycle is enormously difficult and expensive to perform. Looking down at the forces assembled for the University of Michigan performance in Hill Auditorium here on Thursday night [APRIL 8] was a mega-Mahlerian experience, with a stage extension needed to accommodate the nearly 500 musicians (bigger than the forces of any Mahler ‘Symphony of a Thousand’ I have encountered). All that was missing were lighting effects and projections of Blake’s engravings, suggested in the score. But they were on display in the lobby. . . .” [read the entire review]
