Network for New Music

The pure and the profound

TOM PURDOM

The title of Gymnopedies refers to the dancing children of classical Crete, and its individual parts bear descriptive titles like “Magical,” “Glistening” and even “Bratty.” But as the composer George Tsontakis pointed out, he was primarily interested in musical color when he wrote this piece, and the movements could have been given more abstract titles like Color I and Color II.

Despite the emphasis on color, Tsontakis also played with variations in intensity, volume and tempo. He even tossed in bits of melody. But color was the center of interest, and he picked an ensemble that offered him a broad pallet. Gymnopedies employs three very different winds (flute, saxophone, and horn); two widely contrasting strings (violin and cello); several percussion instruments; and the special sounds of the harp and the piano. Tsontakis made good use of the opportunities for contrast, as you’d expect, but his novelties also include striking blends of similar instruments, such as the horn and the sax, and the piano and the harp.

Shulamit Ran’s unpredictable patterns

The other entry on the first half of Network for New Music’s season finale employed another innovative combination: a saxophone and two percussion instruments, the vibraphone and the marimba. In Shulamit Ran’s Song and Dance, the saxophone essentially plays the song and the two mallet instruments play the dance. But Ran didn’t arrange the piece in a simple pattern of first one then the other, as in traditional combinations like the prelude and fugue. The song and the dance alternate and interact in unpredictable patterns, and Ran produces her share of interesting, innovative tone colors.

The Ran and Tsontakis pieces were both primarily examples of pure music: compositions in which the primary attraction is the composer’s manipulation of the basic musical elements. The second half of the Network program introduced a quintet that moved the proceedings into another musical realm.

No ordinary quartet

Sebastian Currier chose the most conventional ensemble on the program: a piano combined with a quartet. But he didn’t settle for the classic piano-and-string-quartet combination. The pianist in Currier’s Static works with a foursome that teams a flute and clarinet with a cello and a violin. In his program notes, Currier described the piece in purely musical terms, but his six movements carry titles like “Ethereal” and “Charged,” and the dominant effect of the quintet is a powerful invocation of mood and emotion.

Currier is just as musically inventive as the other composers on the program, but his musical effects always generated an emotional impact that was obviously based on strong, deeply personal feelings. In the intense fifth movement, for example, the wind players switch to alternate instruments and the whistle of the piccolo and the sonority of the bass clarinet heighten the drive created by the piano and the two strings. The third movement, with its soulful cello melody, is the most conventional. But the movement has its musical novelties, too, and the overall effect is as moving as Shostakovich’s elegies.

Must good music sound serious?

It would be silly to demand that composers limit themselves to music that expresses weighty emotions. Vivaldi’s delight in playing around with different solo instruments is just as treasurable as the emotional profundities of Beethoven’s last quartets. But the real thing always produces some of the strongest moments you can spend in a concert hall.

I managed to hit only three Network for New Music programs this season, but all were just as good as this one. The last Network program I attended was a lively celebration of Elliot Carter’s hundredth birthday that included four chamber works by Carter and ten piano pieces by ten different composers written for the event. The piano pieces were as wildly different as the personalities of the composers, and all radiated the integrity and individualism that characterizes Carter’s music.

New music that audiences will swallow

When I first began reviewing 20 years ago, I soon realized that the best new music compositions showed up at series in which the musicians themselves chose the music. Musicians won’t spend hours learning a new piece if they dislike it and feel certain the audience won’t like it either.

The Network for New Music attracts some of Philadelphia’s best chamber players. They may not pick all the music themselves, but they wouldn’t come back, season after season, if they didn’t have some confidence in the choices Music Director Linda Reichert and her associates come up with. The result is a series of encounters between musicians and composers in which the audience— not just the composers and performers— comes out a winner.