A striking mix of new and old
For the New England Philharmonic’s spring concert at Boston University’s Tsai Performance Center on Saturday night, music director Richard Pittman chose three works that spoke to each another in interesting ways, and left your hearing and worldview a little bit altered - a consummation always to be wished.
This first was a ballet-in-progress by the young Washington, D.C.-born, Los Angeles-based, Latin American-rooted composer Carlos Rafael Rivera,
submitted to the orchestra’s annual Call for Scores. His “Popol-Vuh,” of which we heard the first four movements, is a complex piece illustrating Mayan creation myths. Rivera began it four years ago as a master’s thesis at the University of Southern California. It is a lively score with varied Latin rhythms and melody, and makes use of every instrument and choir of the orchestra, with prominent roles for the woodwinds and vibraphone.
There are simply too many ideas crammed into these 15 minutes. Motifs multiply rather than doubling back to create depth or intensity. Rivera’s music is well made, comfortable, and doesn’t cut deeply. (He says “Popol-Vuh” is conceived as the score for an animated cartoon.) He must eventually decide which of his many accents is his own.
As Aaron Copland did. Like Rivera, Copland was trying to bridge continents when he wrote his Piano Concerto. He had returned from studying in Paris determined to invent an American style. He tried fusing jazz and orchestra, as Gershwin was doing. The concerto, which Copland premiered with Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony, was a failure and Copland gave up on jazz.
The concerto now seems bracing and delightful, with its opening blues subtly divided between orchestra and soloist, followed by a fun ragtime-inspired second movement. The superb pianist Randall Hodgkinson made it work - it may seem paradoxical - by playing with the clarity and precision he might bring to Ravel.
The closer was Bartok’s complete ballet score, “The Miraculous Mandarin,” an undertaking that tested the orchestra of professionals and amateurs to its limits. It was a success, but it was hard to judge in more detail in the noisy acoustic of the Performance Center. The orchestra, and Pittman’s thoughtful programs, deserve a better venue.
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New England Philharmonic
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