Combining two of Michael Gordon’s most daring large-scale orchestral works, Dystopia documents the composer’s dream of not only stretching the capabilities of the modern symphony, but in his words, of “exploring the gray areas between harmony and dissonance.”On its own, the music of Dystopia paints a picture of one city’s future — in this case, the city of Los Angeles — that is frenzied, chaotic, dazzling, electric, and ultimately...loud.Gordon had discovered similar sensibilities in composing ‘Rewriting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony’.Using one element from each of the original movements as a starting point, Gordon crafts a post-modern take on the master’s classical forms that managed both to mesmerize and scandalize the audience at Beethovenfest Bonn, who commissioned the work for its 2006 premiere.Taken together, both works re-imagine the 21st c. symphony as equally reverent of the past (if not also a bit irreverent), while envisioning, as an L.A. Times review of the Dystopia premiere put it, “a drunken fugue of the future.”
