The X Factor at BMOP

Composer Mason Bates

Ok, it's time to play catch up.  A vacation and a bad cold have meant little posting of late - my thanks to all those who have been showing up at the site anyway, hoping I might have something to say!

Of course I did have something to say, particularly about the Boston Modern Orchestra Project concert of a week and a half ago, dubbed "Gen OrchXtrated," which focused on three leading Gen X composers: the photogenic Mason Bates (yes, that's a composer, not a pop star, at left) as well as Huang Ruo and Andrew Norman (see below), two other rising stars who maybe won't make the pages of GQ, but deserve to be heard in the concert hall just the same.

"Gen X" is of course a famously loose term - and it may be worth noting that as this trio were all born at the tail end of the 70's, they're perhaps closer to "Gen Y" than "Gen X" in sensibility.  Certainly Bates and Norman - both winners of multiple academic prizes (Rome, Berlin, et al.) seem absorbed in the technological culture of the millennium; Ruo seems to harken back to older (indeed ancient) forms.

That none of these three - at least judging from the pieces on offer at BMOP - really has a distinctive musical voice is, I admit, somewhat troubling (especially given the accolades that have come their way).  But of course new voices are few and far between these days.  And to be fair, you can feel these young composers attempting to make new conceptual statements out of old musical parts (in a way their works feel more like criticism than art).  Bates and Norman seem absorbed in refurbishing minimalism with an ironic technical gloss, while Ruo, in his Path of Echoes: Chamber Symphony No. 1, has attempted to conjure a new form of aural landscape.

Composer Huang Ruo

For the title "Path of Echoes" admits to a double meaning - it could refer to either a path full of echoes, or the intersecting paths taken by those echoes themselves. Indeed, Ruo is probably more concerned with the second interpretation - his cascades of glissandi seem to move past and through each other (as his time signature subtly shifts to create the impression of slight sonic delays) to generate the impression of a sonic "map" matching the mountain landscape in which the composer first found inspiration for the piece (which ends with a cacophonous landslide).  There were hints here of Asian folk motifs, randomized through a filter of John Cage and other modernists - which gradually built a web of complexity that seemed indebted to minimalism; but nothing, alas, felt emphatically new.  Still, the piece was often haunting, although perhaps the BMOP performance wasn't quite subtle enough to draw out the detailed sense of "space" that I think Ruo had in mind.

The orchestra did better by Norman and Bates, whose work depended more on energy and drive.  Both seem to want to link a kind of charging minimalist churn to the rising role of technology in our lives; in much of Bates' Sea-Blue Circuitry, for instance, the orchestra - careening through a  series of musical quotes from composers ranging from Stravinsky to Copland - was accompanied (or driven) by a kind of techno click-track (generated, I think, acoustically), so the piece sounded a bit like symphonic "house" music. And tellingly, when that track died, so did the work's drive, as it drifted into a doomily serene movement Bates has dubbed "Marine Snow," which is the poetic term for the detritus that drifts from the ocean's surface to its floor (sometimes it takes it days to hit bottom). So it seemed that in Bates' vision, if the culture wasn't dancing as fast as it could to the beat, it was in danger of becoming a dead shark.  (Although don't worry, the power returned in the third movement, and the piece leapt to techno-life again for a racing finale dubbed "Gigawatt Greyhound.")

Norman's vision was, if anything, even darker. The premiere of his Play (the result of a residency at BMOP) relied, like Sea-Blue Circuitry, on a pumping minimalist energy, and a welter of musical quotations - only Norman pushed his technical metaphors even further than Bates: Play was divided not into movements, but "Levels," as video games are, and its phrases were often interrupted by sudden percussive thwacks, like the gunfire in Grand Theft Auto and its ilk.  Indeed, the orchestra itself was converted into a concrete metaphor for group gaming - "Level 2" began with isolated, awkward phrases from individual instruments, with the strings all but miming the bowing of their instruments.  This pushed the orchestra a little closer to performance art than I really want it to go - but the resulting scene did feel like an eerie metaphor for those vast armies of World of Warcraft fans, out in cyber space itching to engage with their game but unable to do so without other, well, players; it was an amusing nod to the basically collective nature of an activity whose devotees tend to think of themselves as rebels and loners.

And like Sea-Blue Circuitry, Play tended to collapse into lonely nihilism on a dime; even in its early, frenzied stages, one could make out a lost little phrase (not quite a theme) that returned in the final "level" (after some characteristically fortissimo blasts) to close out the piece on a bleakly mournful note.  After the game was over, there was apparently nothing left.  Which may be why truly new music is so hard to come by these days.

Composer Andrew Norman

Hanging "Fire" with Gil Rose and BMOP

Gil Rose and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project

It has been a tumultuous year for Gil Rose, founder and conductor of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, which two weekends ago (!) mounted a pleasing evening of classically-themed pieces collectively dubbed "Apollo's Fire."

Indeed, Rose may still be recovering from the closure of Opera Boston, which he had led until its untimely demise (under contested circumstances) last winter.  At least he landed on his feet, though - the hard-working, likable Rose quickly found another post, leading New Hampshire's Monadnock Music, and it was good to see that BMOP is still going strong - judging, at least, from this concert.

As usual, the evening was built  around a new (or newish) piece of music by an academic composer - this time Lewis Spratlan's Apollo and Daphne Variations (from 1987).   Spratlan was a fixture at Amherst for years, and like many other academic composers, he has a Pulitzer to his credit (for his opera Life is a Dream, which I believe dates from the late 70's but has only recently been staged).   And again like many academic composers, he is obviously a skilled and intelligent musician; the Apollo and Daphne Variations proved lushly - even brilliantly - orchestrated, and the piece covered a lot (and I mean a lot) of musical ground: ten central variations rubbed shoulders with a fugue and a panoply of different effects, most of them late (or post-) romantic, but others modernist, and some even atonal.

Still, the resulting mélange left you scratching your head; the basic (very basic) idea seemed to be that "Apollo and Daphne don't mix" which I suppose is true, but misses the breathlessly poignant drama of this particular myth.  In his notes Spratlan described his central theme as "vaguely in the style of Schumann," but the motif was only too recognizably a lift from the familiar "Traumereï," a piece with many traditional associations, but few that seem applicable to the myth of Apollo and Daphne. The mix of irony and grand tragedy that Spratlan's orchestration conjured likewise seemed - well, gorgeous but also oddly overbearing, and somehow beside the point.

But then the new music on a typical BMOP programs usually strikes me as an elaborate, over-considered misfire.  Indeed, I really go to BMOP to hear the old music, not the new stuff, because Rose often builds fascinating programs around his premiere (or near-premiere).  This time the musical framing was particularly strong - Stravinsky's Apollon musagète, the accompaniment for Balanchine's classic ballet, was the highlight, but the evening also featureda  strong reading of Nikos Skalkottas' Five Greek Dances (1936) and a more mixed take on Elliott Carter's The Minotaur (1947).

I don't know Skalkottas, but his Greek dances proved intriguing - pulsing and muscular, and played with dark energy by BMOP's secret weapon, their accomplished string section.  The Stravinsky was even better - "Apollo, Leader of the Muses" is a superb score, which I've never heard live without the accompanying Balanchine dance; this gave me a chance to appreciate its purely musical qualities, particularly its subtly growing rhythmic complexity (which is highly appropriate, given the ballet follows the wooing of Terpsichore, the muse of rhythm, by the eponymous god - who's really just a stand-in for Balanchine himself).

The only real disappointment on the program, actually, turned out to be the Carter; The Minotaur proved a bit of a mess.  Its greatest intrigue, I suppose, came from the glimpse it gave of a pre-modernist phase for this particular composer; The Minotaur is (like the Stravinsky) a story ballet, but it lacks Stravinsky's genius - or innate sense of structure (I'm afraid I'll always rank Carter, lovable as he is, in the second tier of composers).  As with the Spratlan, though, the orchestral color was always arresting, and when Carter dramatized sex with the man-bull, he did work up a frenzied lather of Harvard-Classics sex horror. The trouble was that sans any accompanying dance, the piece grows muddled (it's one dramatic effect after another), and while the BMOP string section sounded as strong as ever, the brass here was blaring and broad.  Oh, well.  For this listener, the Stravinsky, and even the Skalkottas, were worth the trip anyway.

String theory

Gil Rose conducts. Photo by Liz Linder.

I was feeling a little, well, strung out this weekend (having seen both Itzhak Perlman and the Artemis String Quartet), so perhaps I simply wasn't in the mood for "Strings Attached," the latest concert by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (last Saturday at Jordan Hall). Or then again, maybe the concert was simply as mixed a bag as it seemed. At any rate, it proved a rather rambling evening, with perhaps no very deep lows, but only one real high.

The composers on offer ranged from the fresh (Nathan Ball) to the locally familiar (Scott Wheeler) to the established (Betty Olivero) to the modern classic (Bartók, Babbitt). "Stained Glass" was the one world premiere, by the very-young Ball, who is currently a graduate student at New England Conservatory. As you might glean from its title, it was a bit earnest, and maybe even a little corny - a rippling piece of Aaron-Copland-meets-minimalism that aimed for something vaguely uplifting. Still, it arguably got to that uplifting place in an accomplished, thoughtful way, with a last-minute surge that hinted at more interesting things to come (the composer says it's the first part of a triptych).

So Ball clearly has promise; with Scott Wheeler, however, I think it's time for more than promise - but "Crazy Weather" (from 2004) didn't really deliver much more than that. Witty and highly wrought, it was nonetheless never really gripping; oddly, like "Stained Glass," it was at its most interesting at the finish, when a sudden burst of energy seemed to be released that to my mind called out for resolution in a larger structure. Meanwhile the next work on the program, Stephen Hartke’s three-movement “Alvorada’’ (from 1983), boasted more than enough length to really develop a musical idea, but just seemed to meander through its course.

As you might guess, by intermission I was in the mood for something really meaty, but instead had to suffer through Milton Babbitt's silly "Correspondences for String Orchestra and Synthesized Tape" (from 1967). "Here comes the blinkety-blink music," my companion sighed just before it began, and so it was hard not giggle as, sure enough, the recorded electronic serialism went blinkety-blink, just like outtakes from Forbidden Planet, while the orchestra tried to respond. Or rather correspond. To BMOP's credit, the string players gave their all under the guidance of Rose, and did manage to convey an impression of passionate exploration. What exactly they and Babbitt were looking for remained a mystery, however. Maybe it was Altair 4.

Finally we got to program's highlight, Betty Olivero's “Neharót, Neharót,’’ a song of mourning for the ongoing strife in the Middle East (the title translates from Hebrew as "Rivers, Rivers") essayed with fierce commitment by solo violist Kim Kashkashian. A strangely moving mix of wail and chant (accompanied by literal, recorded wails and chants) the piece is a richly embroidered work indeed - it's flecked with references to the likes of Monteverdi - and Kashkashian made an electric connection with the audience (the piece was written for her, and her identification with it seemed complete). My only qualm was the use of recorded voices; why weren't the singers live? I dislike "mediated" performance in general, and I worried at times that “Neharót, Neharót," like much of, say, Osvaldo Golijov, operated as a response to televised grief rather than the thing itself. Or is that actually the more appropriate mode for such a work? (Olivero has said the piece was inspired by television footage of a battle between Hezbollah and Israeli forces.) I confess I'm on the fence on that one, but certainly Olivero managed to conjure with these taped segments quite a complicated political and metaphoric space, of a kind that I doubt Milton Babbitt ever dreamed of.

The final selection on the program (which probably should have ended with Olivero) was Bartók's familiar Divertimento for String Orchestra (1939). BMOP gave the piece a solid reading, but seemed to offer few new insights into it, and I was a bit puzzled by its inclusion. I felt the pressure of a certain correspondence between it and the Babbitt and the Olivero (two included tape, two included politics!) which felt slightly forced, and which I decided to shake off. And alas, the work's complexity, offered so late in the day (as it were) seemed to only scramble further the musical message of the evening. If there's such a thing as too little, too late, then maybe there's such a thing as too much, too late, too. Which doesn't mean I wasn't grateful to BMOP for an introduction to “Neharót, Neharót." It just means that it's always a good idea to leave the crowd wanting more.

The Barber songbook

Samuel Barber (near left, with his lover Gian Carlo Menotti) once described himself as "a living dead composer," and indeed, for most his life his commitment to romantic feeling in the modern age consigned him to the dustbin of critical opinion. But history has a way of upending that dustbin, and Barber's gift for lyrical simplicity, cemented in the popular mind by his Adagio for Strings, has enabled him to outlast his detractors. Today Barber's reputation seems secure as a minor, but wonderful, composer, and he's taken his place in the pantheon of 20th century music that people actually like - next to Copland, Sibelius and others who found personal ways to communicate tonally to their time.

Central to Barber's achievement were his songs, which showcase his strengths (a melodic gift supported by intelligent craft) while sidestepping his great weakness (the lack of large, original architecture). So last weekend's "Barberfest," produced by the Florestan Recital Project as part of the "Voice of America" Festival at Tufts (in conjunction with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project) was a welcome chance to hear his entire catalogue. I attended Friday evening, and was struck by how well said catalogue held up; it's rare to hear a concert devoted entirely to one composer without sensing an eventual underlying repetition, but Barber's works (here both early and late), though certainly all sourced in one voice, steadily surprised in their subtle variety.

It helped that the composer, by all accounts a literary man, had terrific taste in texts. Sometimes I think more than half a song's success (or failure) can be traced to its lyrics, and so I was pleased to find Barber's selections ranged from Joyce to Rilke to Houseman to (yes) Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Actually, one of the Joyces didn't really work - Barber's attempt to set the sardonic romance of Finnegans Wake fell oddly flat. The other selections from Joyce (cameos, really) were far more successful. But then almost nothing on the program "failed," although my favorites were probably the brief, but hilarious "Dere Two Fella Joe," the po-faced "Monks and Raisins," (Villa) the exquisitely mournful "Of that so sweet imprisonment," (Joyce) the gently admonishing "Thy Love," (Browning) and the casually surreal "A Green Lowland of Pianos" (Milosz!). The central thread in the concert was a deep yet somehow luminous sense of melancholy - Barber struggled all his life with depression - and this registered perhaps with greatest force in the settings of five poems from Rilke, "Mélodies Passagères," which were meant as a tribute to the gay French master of modern art-song, Francis Poulenc and his partner, baritone Pierre Bernac (one, "Un cygne," is sung below by Thomas Hampson).

The evening's singers all acquitted themselves well, although the fulsomeness (and vibrato) of Sarah Pelletier's soprano sometimes seemed to overwhelm the material. Better matched to Barber were the more transparent Shadi Ebrahami, who delighted with "The Daisies" and "October Weather," and Joe Dan Harper (at left, with Anne Kissel), who worked wonders with "Of that so sweet imprisonment" and "Mélodies Passagères." Even Pelletier seemed to find the right level of attack with "La Nuit" and "O Boundless, Boundless Evening." But alas, at that moment the evening had to end; would it had indeed been boundless.