SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

CONTACT! - James Matheson, Jay Alan Yim, Julian Anderson: Magnus Lindberg (host), John Schaefer (host), Alan Gilbert (conductor), New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 17.12.2010 (BH)

James Matheson: True South (2010, World premiere)

Jay Alan Yim: neverthesamerivertwice (2010, World premiere)

Julian Anderson: The Comedy of Change (2009, U.S. premiere)

Forging ahead with the New York Philharmonic’s energetic, enterprising and oh-so-welcome CONTACT! series, conductor Alan Gilbert led the ensemble at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in three recent works, two of them commissioned by the orchestra. And as Gilbert explained, this program couldn’t have better demonstrated the disparate aesthetics offered by composers writing today. Anyone who still says, “I don’t like contemporary music” had better be ready to admit to dismissing a huge array of work by composers who couldn’t be more different from each other.

James Matheson says he enjoys tinkering, and confessed that as a boy, he took apart his parents’ stove. I’m not quite sure how this charming quality found its way into True South, which has the expansiveness of a Clint Eastwood movie, but no matter. Starting with a heavily accented opening, insistent drumbeats telegraph either “ritual” or “caravan,” helped by slower sections in which wide swaths of winds and strings evoke prototypical wide open spaces. Eventually a bell-tinged clamor has the energy of Respighi’s Feste Romane—but Matheson’s sensibility is more complex, more subtle, with a slow gleam rather than showers of sparks. Somehow his “south” seems more urban; I wonder if he’s spent much time in contemporary Atlanta.

Internet domain names in which words are all mashed together were the inspiration for neverthesamerivertwice by Alan Jay Yim, currently professor of music composition at Northwestern University. In effect a piano concerto, the soloist—here the superb Eric Huebner—plays in every single measure of the entire score. Yim divides the ensemble symmetrically, equally on either side of the stage, with the piano directly behind the podium. Although the music slows to an andante briefly, the piece opens with a swirl of activity, and seems in constant, unstoppable motion for most of its tenure. Yim envisions the work as “partners rather than adversaries,” and Mr. Huebner certainly held up his (enormous) part of the bargain.

British composer Julian Anderson cites an amusing and intriguing observation at the core of The Comedy of Change: “Evolution produces some very strange things.” In seven sections, the language begins with a furious, jumpy, brittle opening, then turns to an interlude with torn and crumpled newspaper. A microtonally-tuned synthesizer adds its own peculiar color along the way, while sections seem positively piccolo-happy—perhaps summoning up a flock of oddly-adapted birds. As with every work on the program, the Philharmonic’s musicians held nothing back, and Gilbert couldn’t have been more dedicated. My sole regret is that this was the final CONTACT! concert of the current season. With any luck, the orchestra will double the size of the series—and incorporate some of the results into the subscription programming. All of these deserve second hearings.

Bruce Hodges