It was an absolute thrill to hear the Boston Modern Orchestra premiere Eternal Return, a new work for full orchestra composed this past year. I took Debussy’s Jeux as the primary inspiration for the piece, but as I was finishing later movements, I was braced by the death of Kaija Saariaho, such an immense luminary in the field who I was fortunate enough to have a furtive correspondence with. And so the work takes its title from a meditation on passing into the afterlife.
The Boston Musical Intelligencer wrote that the first movement “showcased Aylward’s skill in orchestration, masterfully pulling interesting colors out of the orchestra.” Clifton Ingram, who wrote notes for the program, remarked that the historical underpinnings of the ‘eternal return’ are apt to revisit during a moment of rebuilding and reevaluation after the covid pandemic. Ingram also remarked on the works ‘pointedly impressionistic gestures’, which are surely connected to Debussy’s Jeux being a point of departure, and also noted the finale’s reference to William Kentridge’s Shadow Procession: another allusion to a proto-Christian reference to the ‘eternal return’. Ingrams says of the ending that it, ‘glides with scorrevole fluency but is never lacking in its variation.”
Score Excerpt from movement I, Awakening:
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