A few years ago, a friend said something that stuck in my mind. The music being written today, he said, has no common style; there is no longer any unifying ‘movement’ to speak of.

This rang true: given that we live in a world of limitless perspectives, it stands to reason that classical music has followed suit.

But once in a while, there emerges a composer who reminds me that no matter how many times the death of classical music is portentously announced, ‘new’ music, with its uncanny knack of telling us what we already know, bursts into the atmosphere like a comet, tracing the contours of the future and becoming, as American literary critic Harold Bloom wrote, “a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange.” 

Ralf Yusuf Gawlick

Ralf Yusuf Gawlick. Photo © Lee Pellegrini

For my money the composer Ralf Yusuf Gawlick fits firmly in this category. His oratorio for soprano, baritone and chamber ensemble, O Lungo Drom (The Long Road), is a work of great power that speaks directly to some of the problems confronting our culture. 

It...