*** CORIGLIANO: “Of Rage and Remembrance.” Leonard...

*** CORIGLIANO: “Of Rage and Remembrance.” Leonard Slatkin, conductor; National Symphony Orchestra. (RCA Victor)

** CORIGLIANO: “Creations,” other works. I Fiamminghi; Rudolf Werthen, conductor. (Telarc)

** JOHN CORIGLIANO: “Early Works.” Various artists. (CRI)

John Corigliano took center stage in American music in 1990 with his Symphony No. 1, written in response to the AIDS crisis. The Slatkin/National Symphony effort is a vital performance of Corigliano’s haunting work. It is coupled for the first time with “Of Rage and Remembrance,” a 13-minute reworking of the third movement of the symphony for soloists and chorus.

The new piece sets an anguished poem by “Ghosts of Versailles” librettist William M. Hoffman and, at the close, invites the chorus to sing the names of friends they’ve lost. It’s a stunning but ambiguous moment: All those lost; all those lost in a mazy haze of sound.

Such powerful works don’t arise out of nowhere. Two other CDs sample Corigliano’s accomplished pieces from 1959 to 1995. How else would we discover that the tarantella in the symphony reaches back to the “bouncy” (the composer’s word) tarantella in “Gazebo Dances,” composed in 1972 for piano, four hands? Or that he was already a master orchestrator by 1965 (Elegy for Orchestra) and adept in setting English to music by the early ‘70s (two poems by Richard Wilbur)?