The approach is full of anticipation, baleful and lonely. An optimistic string section intervenes briefly, but a dark cloud of cellos carries a threat to the den, joined by hard drums and deep choral voices. The strings answer the choir in call-and-response, and the music seems to open out to barbarian lands, the home of totemic wolf spirits and wolves themselves. The third movement brightens, forges on through the encouragement of women’s voices and driving drums—until the ensemble comes together, majestic, epic. In the final movement, the song quiets, the drums maintaining the energy, then builds to a great crescendo that repeats the call-and-response and a final decrescendo on cellos and basses, back to the threatening dark.
