Symphony No. 5

It’s too bad Cecil B. DeMille isn’t making those monster motion pictures any more, because Jay Greenberg’s Symphony No. 5 seems to mirror the director’s love of age-old storylines and gilded set pieces. There’s been plenty of grumbling about this newly anointed composer prodigy, but the truth of the matter seems to be that Greenberg is writing “classical music” that sounds like exactly what mainstream America expects it to sound like—sort of a distillation of Disney’s Fantasia. That’s not intended as a slight to his talent—considering the kid was born in 1991, that he can turn out such polished compositions (doesn’t hurt to have the LSO under Serebrier showing off your material, either) demonstrates that he’s a good study with an open and promising musical future. But let’s not make a judgment call on what that future will be before he starts speaking using his own voice.

—MS