Lighter side of 3 modern composers

The day's musical offerings included surprisingly easy-to-listen-to works by three modern composers often considered difficult and unapproachable.

Chamber Music Eight opened with the uncompromising serialist composer Charles Wuorinen's "Das Glogauer Liederbuch," his adaptation and reinstrumentation of four short pieces he found in a fifteenth-century German song collection. Without changing any of the notes or rhythms, Wuorinen's prismatic transformation of these miniatures highlights how unexpected and peculiar yet completely charming some of this rarely-heard pre-Baroque music actually is.

Later, on Music in Time IV, we heard an arrangement of Kurt Weill's "Alabama Song" by Morton Feldman (1926-1987), a New York composer known for lengthy pieces filled with sparse, quiet, slowly developing musical motifs. It was rather startling, but quite enjoyable to hear this savvy, snazzy, harmonically wild transformation for seven-piece dance band, originally written for some of Feldman's jazz-playing friends in the East Village, and only recently re-discovered by his publisher. Tammy Hensrud, who sang the number with appealingly earthy intensity in "Mahagonny," reprised it here with great aplomb.

Feldman's arrangement was preceded by German composer Wolfgang Rihm's "Music Hall Suite." Rihm is another purveyor of some very thorny stuff, but this piece is a toe-tapper. The first movement is a rag, and though various subversive elements keep creeping in, the composer obviously has genuine affection for the genre. The last movement is a really nice Charleston. Marc Dana Williams conducted with perfect high spirits and deadpan humor.

More chamber music

Chamber Music Eight also featured the "Clarinet Quartet in F minor" by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who had a British mother and an African father. Coleridge-Taylor was keen on interpolating African-American spirituals into the classical music tradition, much as other nationalist composers were making similar use of indigenous folk materials, such as Edvard Grieg in Norway or Johannes Brahms with his Hungarian Dances. The Quintet, for clarinet plus string quartet, sounds a lot like the music Antoin Dvorak wrote during his sojourn in America, which resulted most famously in the "New World" Symphony. It's an extremely attractive work, with a decidedly folk song feel at times, including overtones of Stephen Foster and American Indian melodies.

Pianist Stephen Prutsman finished the program with Mozart's Piano Concerto in A Major, K. 414, in a reduced arrangement for piano plus string quartet. Prutsman played with ringing clarity and superb articulation, plus occasional hints of tasteful rubato.

Dazzling duet and sensational solos

While some were still busy digesting the musical intricacies of "Faustus," there was more Dusapin to consider on Tuesday's Music in Time concert: "To God," a duet for soprano and soprano sax, to a two-line text by William Blake. Just as original and uncompromising as the opera, the strangely beautiful piece is full of unconventional but haunting melodic phrases. Soprano Keira Duffy and saxophonist Eliot Gattegno, sometimes doubling each other, sometimes harmonizing, gave an uncommonly skillful and soulful performance.

Preceding this were two astonishing solo turns. Cellist Danielle Cho performed Kaija Saariaho's "Sept Papillons" ("Seven Butterflies"), a blindingly virtuosic yet delicate and remarkably expressive piece. Amid a battery of extended string-playing techniques, all rendered with absolute mastery by Cho, the composer conjures unmistakably butterfly-like flitterings, with both hands contributing to the effect visually as well as musically.

Next, bassist Aaron John Baird further cemented his stardom with "Valentine," by Jacob Druckman, a piece of performance art where the player displays an obsessive, violent, even sadistic relationship with his bass. Druckman calls upon the player to pummel his instrument all over with his hands, his bow, and a drum mallet, accompanied by humming, whispering, and muttering. Baird threw himself into the work with total commitment, creating a character who occasionally grinned maniacally and seemed to derive a possibly unseemly amount of gratification from abusing his instrument. (Druckman had originally given the piece a far more suggestive title, but his publisher nixed it.)

Conductor Anthony Baresse conducted his own piece, "Apostolic Rag," which he described as a 12-tone piece for 12 musicians lasting 144 bars. And the title, of course, references the twelve Apostles. (I hate to spoil the numeric consistency, but it reminded me of Stravinsky's Ragtime for Eleven Instruments.) The piece is Baresse's winning mix of Schoenberg-style atonality with Joplin-esque ragtime forms, plus some enjoyable metric trickery, and it's loads of fun.

Festival Orchestra

Music Director Emmanuel Villaume opened Tuesday night's Festival Orchestra concert with back-to-back portraits of two famous musical pranksters (making him something of a prankster himself). Strauss, who once bragged that his powers of musical description were so great that he could depict a soup spoon in music, filled his "Till Eulenspiegel" with lots of terrific musical chicanery, including the famous opening horn solo, which principal hornist Pamela Harris knocked off flawlessly. Villaume whipped the group into an exciting Straussian frenzy, but the playing never lost clarity or precision of ensemble.

It's very difficult to hear Dukas' "The Sorceror's Apprentice" without thinking of Mickey Mouse, but this was a good chance to appreciate what a wildly colorful and musically substantial piece it is.

The main event was Mahler's Fourth Symphony. (Did everybody notice that we had two Fifths — Beethoven and Mahler — last year, and two Fourths — Brahms and Mahler — this year? Extra credit: how else are these pairs of symphonies related?) Villaume gave a smooth, polished, and relaxed account of the opening movement, free of the over-inflection and fussiness some conductors like to impose.

The second movement, to use some of the advanced terminology I learned in college, is one of the coolest things ever, starting with a swirling and macabre violin solo in three-quarter time, delectably played by concertmaster Tim Peters. It also features an expansively lyrical theme which, when reprised by the first under Villaume's expert shaping, was as beautiful as I've ever heard it played.

Even some Mahler lovers, this one included, think the third movement is too long, and individual playing was not quite up to this orchestra's usual impeccable standards, but the shattering E-major intrusion near the end certainly refocused our attention.

The fourth movement is really an orchestral song, "Das Himmlische Leben," a child's speculation about a life in Heaven, filled with delicious food and frolicking animals. Soprano Monica Yunus provided a suitably divine account.

In addition to her glowing, pure and rounded vocal delivery, she seemed fully overtaken by the child's vision, genuinely charmed by all the images, and as a result was utterly charming herself.