Review of concert from 2004-07-17: NYC, Avery Fisher Hall, Il Sogno, plus set with EC & SN - with the Brooklyn Philharmonic
New York Post, 2004-07-19
- Shirley Fleming

'DREAM' COME TRUE FOR COSTELLO

By SHIRLEY FLEMING
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July 19, 2004 -- IT'S impossible to pigeon- hole Elvis Costello, and the Lincoln Center Festival has been smart enough not even to try.

The diverse talents of this very popular singer/songwriter/composer, just turning 50, could not really be contained in a single program, so the festival gave him three last week.

The Netherlands' jazz ensemble Metropole Orkest backed him in the first concert and his own trio, the Imposters, collaborated in the second.

The mini-fest came to its climax on Saturday as a tumultuous audience welcomed him to Avery Fisher Hall for the U.S. premiere of his first full-length symphonic work, "Il Sogno" (The Dream), performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic.

The work started two years ago as a ballet score for an Italian company's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and proved rich enough to expand into an hour-long, three-movement piece that takes musical glances at various situations in Shakespeare's play.

The emphasis is on "quick." In the attempt to capture the spirit of no fewer than 21 incidents from the play, "The Dream" is inevitably fragmented, and often a particularly promising idea got nipped off just as you started to become absorbed in it.

But say this: Costello knows his way around an orchestra. The writing is full of color and variety, and solo instruments get their fair share of the spotlight — a beguiling trumpet song in the second movement still lingers.

There are all sorts of style references — luxuriantly romantic passages, outbursts of Ivesian exuberance, sudden turns into Latin rhythms, sturdy marches, a couple of hints of Elizabethan ballad. The work goes all over the place, but it's a fun trip.

IL SOGNO (THE DREAM)
Symphonic work from Elvis Costello at Avery Fisher Hall