Catching Up with Composer David Del Tredici, as the Albany Symphony Records Two of His Early “Alice” Works

“Lewis Carroll’s influence is all over contemporary culture,” writes Seth Colter Walls in Thursday’s (1/5) New York Times. “And, as a new album from the Albany Symphony demonstrates, there are the Carroll-inspired musical works of the composer David Del Tredici, some of which have been captured on two world premiere recordings from the ensemble, led by David Alan Miller. These long-awaited performances—of ‘Pop-Pourri’ (from 1968, and revised in 1973) and ‘Adventures Underground’ (written in 1971 and revised in 1977)—are a booming, psychedelic marvel. In the initial seconds of the first movement of ‘Pop-Pourri,’ Del Tredici smash cuts between a Bach harmonization of a Lutheran chorale, ‘Es Ist Genug,’ and his own setting of Carroll’s text. The ‘Litany of the Blessed Virgin’ is also in the mix — making good on Del Tredici’s claim, in the album’s liner notes, that the piece is ‘a kind of Cantata of the Sacred and Profane.’… His ‘Alice’ works — which encompass chamber music, grand symphonic entries and even an opera, ‘Dum Dee Tweedle,’ from 1990 — have drawn public acclaim and interest from elite performers for decades.”