RECORD REVIEWS
If an orchestra is going to wait more than a decade before releasing its first record, it had better go big when it finally does—which is what the String Orchestra of Brooklyn has done. Afterimage includes compositions by Paganini (1720-1840) and Pergolesi (1710-1736) alongside works by Rome Prize winner Christopher Cerrone (b.1984) and the less wellknown Jacob Cooper (b.1980).
The String Orchestra of Brooklyn knows of going big; its 32 musicians worked with composers John Cale and Tony Conrad in a six-hour installation work at the 2015 opening of the Whitney Museum’s new location in lower Manhattan. It has given premiere performances of works by Anthony Coleman, Catherine Lamb, and Alex Mincek.
The centerpiece of Afterimage—occupying more than half of its 49 minutes—is Cooper’s astonishing Stabat Mater Dolorosa, composed in 2009. As a composer, Cooper covers a lot of ground. He wrote an opera about an imagined Britney Spears/Justin Timberlake reunion as well as a song cycle inspired by the haiku of Matsuo Bash?. His Stabat Mater is a fittingly bold gesture for a bold orchestra. With just the title, Cooper puts himself in league with Haydn and Scarlatti, Dvo?ák and Verdi, Pärt and Penderecki—all of whom wrote settings of the 13th-century hymn for the Virgin Mary—not to mention Pergolesi, whose rendering served as the inspiration for Cooper’s work. Music about the glory of God and the miracle of creation is common enough, but taking on the Stabat Mater is something more. You and God might be able to hang, but when God’s mom walks in, you’d better say “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am.” Whatever one’s spiritual beliefs, laying claim to that history is not something to be done lightly.
The work is built from a phrase from the first movement of Pergolesi’s , slowed to the point of stillness and with voices submerged into the strings. The single movement falls naturally into three
