Imagine setting the words to Paul McCartney’s ‘Yesterday’ while ignoring the song’s well-known flowing melody, plangent harmonies and nostalgic expression. Difficult? This is what John Corigliano attempted to do in Mr Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan in 2000, setting well-known Dylan songs such as ‘Blowin’ in the wind’, ‘Masters of war’ and ‘All along the watchtower’ to his own music. While the results appear on the surface to be far removed from Dylan’s original songs, Corigliano’s settings work very well on their own terms, and perhaps these differences are in fact not as great as they may first seem.

Corigliano’s song-cycle begins with a mysterious, atmospheric opening prelude that bursts into an animated, dancelike middle section to the words from ‘Mr Tambourine Man’. ‘Clothes line’ recalls Samuel Barber in its wistful lyricism, with soprano Laura Hynes’s understated declamatory style working well. Hynes adopts a greater dynamic range and more dramatic expression during the middle portion of the song-cycle, especially in ‘Blowin’ in the wind’ and ‘Masters of war’. Full of yet-to-be-realised promise and potential, ‘Chimes of freedom’ sees Corigliano drawing in much the same way as American singer-songwriters have done from natural speech rhythms, inflections and patterns. These connections form even closer alliances in the postlude, ‘Forever young’, where Hynes’s largely unaccompanied vocal line looks to the folk like simplicity of Dylan’s own songwriting style. The pared-down version on this recording for voice and sextet serves to focus the listener’s attention on Corigliano’s subtle use of wordplay associations and word-painting, offering an interesting comparison with the version for full orchestra featuring soprano Hila Plitmann and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra directed by JoAnn Falletta (1/09).

The other work on this disc, Vincent Ho’s energetic three-movement Gryphon Realms for piano trio, could not be further removed from Dylan’s socially rooted protest lyrics. Inspired by gryphon mythology, the first movement, ‘Serpentile’, springs to life with a dramatic opening punctuated by throbbing bass notes on dampened piano strings against glissando interjections on violin and cello. The dreamlike ‘Gryphonsong’ revolves around pentatonic, birdlike calls and responses, followed by an elegiac chorale that ‘drifts in and out like a distant memory’, according to the composer. A fiery, Lutosławski-like finale culminates in an animated fugal section and cliff-hanger ending that typifies Ho’s filmlike conception of classical composition.