Corigliano, J.: Symphony No. 2 / The Mannheim Rocket

REVIEWS: John Corigliano's Second Symphony won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize, not that most listeners will care or should care. It's an arrangement for string orchestra of the 1996 String Quartet, a work in five-movement arch form similar to Bartók's Fourth Quartet, in which related pairs of movements balance on either side of a central "night music" fulcrum. As might be expected from a composer acknowledged for his brilliant orchestration, this arrangement is no mere transcription; instead it takes advantage of the full resources of the modern string orchestra and ranges stylistically from the exquisite melody that opens the final Postlude to the avant-garde atmospherics of the opening and central Night Music. This isn't easy music to take by any means, but it is extremely well written and consistently engaging in a dark and gloomy sort of way. The fourth movement, an intriguing lopsided fugue, is especially imaginative. With The Mannheim Rocket we're on more familiar ground, and the sparks