Holes in the Pocket

“The Pierrot ensemble has become the de facto new-music grouping for the 20th century,” Miller Theatre’s conductor and musical director, George Steel, lamented recently. In an attempt to get away from the Schonbergian instrumentation of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, Mr. Steel commissioned 12 new works for instrumental soloists and sinfonietta, billed as Pocket Concertos, to be premiered over the next three years.The first of this ambitious series of concerts was Saturday evening, and featured a work for solo accordion, a double concerto for tuba and bass, and a piano concerto. A fourth work by Japanese composer Ichizo Okashiro based on Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” was to have featured his sister as piano soloist, but Mr. Steel withdrew it at the last minute.Julia Wolfe’s Accordion Concerto, subtitled “True Love,” provided a disappointing start to the series. Best known as one of the founders of New York’s Bang on a Can collective, Ms. Wolfe states in the program notes that she was perplexed by Mr. Steel’s commission, since her previous work focused on the interaction of the group, rather than on individual players.This was precisely the problem with her piece, which could be termed an anticoncerto.As soloist Guy Klucevsek’s fingers fluttered lightly over the keys of the accordion, his repetitive arpeggios and tremolos competed inconsequentially with dissonant chord clusters in the strings. Repetitive scale fragments in the piano continued unabated as each section of the ensemble rose and fell nearly within the same octave range, creating a tide of sonically muddied waves. The only respite came in the middle of this one-movement work, when the accordion played repetitive, sustained whole notes. For most of the work, it was impossible to discern anything of Mr. Klucevsek’s technique.Benedict Mason’s Double Concerto for Bass and Tuba shared Ms. Wolfe’s failure to elicit anything of a true concerto texture. But it was far more entertaining.Like many modern composers before him, most notably Iannis Xenakis and Charles Ives, Mr. Mason is known for experimenting with both space and multiple time signatures. During this piece, sound emanated from each corner of the auditorium as instrumentalists trotted on, off, around, and across the stage seemingly at random, emitting short, atonal flutters. Adding to the cacophony, nearly everyone in the ensemble was wearing head phones and being fed separate click tracks.Lost in the shuffle was the heroic struggle of the soloists, bassist Joseph Carver and tubist Marcus Rojas. Barely suppressed laughter from the audience greeted the parade of euphoniums, alpine horns, elongated Iranian ney flutes, enormous arch lutes, and several strange homemade Dr. Seusslike contraptions.The holes in this pocket were mended when Brooklyn native John Musto took the stage to give an authoritative reading of his Piano Concerto No. 2.Mr. Musto’s energetic work is written in the standard three-movement sonata form, but its outer movements are infused with the same basic elements that inspired Bernstein. Latin rhythms with Stravinsky-like shifts in time signature provided a perfect vehicle not only for Mr. Musto’s ample pianistic technique, but also for the individual members of the ensemble. The wind writing in particular, which included the effective use of bass clarinet throughout, was expertly crafted, and the terse, slow movement with muted Miles Davislike trumpet solos provided a perfect atonal respite.Future commissions in the Pocket Concerto series will include a Violin Concerto by Charles Wuorinen next year and a chamber concerto by John Zorn in year three.

Holes in the Pocket

Holes in the Pocket

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