JOHN HARBISON (b.1938): Full Moon in March (Lorraine DiSimone [mezzo], Anne Harley [soprano], Frank Kelley [tenor], James Maddalena [baritone]), Mirabai Songs (Janna Baty [mezzo]), Exequien for Calvin Simmons.

Description: Full Moon is a chamber opera after Yeats' late play, an odd and esoteric treatise on spiritual/material duality populated by mysterious and ambiguous symbolic characters. Harbison's music underlines the text in colorful instrumentation (enhanced through the incorporation of a prepared piano) and an exotic tinge provided by the prominent percussion part, vastly extended melismatic vocal lines approaching caricature, and hints of middle-Eastern modalities. The Exequien is a brief, moving in memoriam piece for a colleague, harmonically straightforward compared to the other works here, but highly inventive in timbre, emotionally insistent in a mood of restrained melancholy. Libretto and texts included. Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Gil Rose.