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Sunday, March 31, 2002

By Andrew Druckenbrod, Post-Gazette Classical Music Critic

ittle good has come that's come easy. The phrase could be the motto of the loose federation of individuals known as contemporary composers and those listeners who love what they write.
There are so many reasons for an orchestra not to program new music -- attendance issues being the major one -- that it's a wonder any newer pieces get heard at all. It's cheaper to play Beethoven, it takes less time to prepare, and more patrons appreciate it.

No matter. Many new pieces still manage to join the repertory, which is crucial since music needs contemporary compositions as much as it needs the three B's -- Beethoven, Bach and Brahms. There's no reason classical music shouldn't join the ranks of other active artistic disciplines in the stockpiling of "modern classics." It is only now that we are consistently hearing works from the '40s, '50s and '60s, let alone from the past 25 years.

	Related stories & Performances Local composers pick favorite modern works Modern classics were sometimes harshly received at first UPCOMING PERFORMANCES Pittsburgh Chamber Music Project Program: Works of Oliver Knussen; Mimi Lerner, soprano. Where: The Andy Warhol Museum, North Side. When: 8 p.m. Tuesday. Tickets: $9 to $19.50; 412-237-8300. Duquesne University Contemporary Ensemble David Stock, conductor Program: Premieres by graduate student composers. Where: PNC Recital Hall, Duquesne University, Uptown. When: 8 p.m. Thursday. Suggested donation: $5; 412-396-4632. Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Oliver Knussen, conductor; Pinchas Zukerman, violin Program: Knussen, "Flourish With Fireworks," Concerto for Violin and Orchestra; Busoni, "Berceuse Elegiaque"; Henze, Symphony No. 5. Where: Heinz Hall, Downtown. When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Tickets: $19 to $63; 412-392-4900.

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has committed to more new music this year. This week alone, the PSO's New Music Festival encompasses a Pittsburgh Chamber Music Project, a Duquesne University concert and symphony concerts featuring works by Oliver Knussen, Ferrucio Busoni and Hans Werner Henze.

While the festival may not approach the orchestra's Pittsburgh International Contemporary Music Festival of 1952, it's more than the orchestra has done in years to promote new works.

"I wouldn't have done anything different this season," says managing director Gideon Toeplitz. "We get sporadic letters on one piece or another. For those who are not used to this, it is too different. But I don't think we have done anything bad."

On the contrary, there has been much positive response to the programming, not the least of which comes from Pittsburgh's composers.

"There's been more music that I have wanted to hear in the past year than in a long time," says David Stock, a composer at Duquesne University.

The programming also has begun to dispel the notion that music director Mariss Jansons doesn't appreciate new music. "This perception is one of the things Mariss is trying to repair," says Toeplitz, who notes that Jansons frequently programmed new music as leader of the Oslo Philharmonic.

As part of its festival, the PSO welcomes one of the world's great advocates of modern music, the composer and conductor Oliver Knussen, who has more than 200 premieres to his credit. Now music director of the London Sinfonietta, Knussen has championed many a work over his career. He believes the answer to expanding the new music repertoire is high standards and patience.

"The prerequisite of being a serious composer is that one should aspire to a pretty high level," Knussen says, speaking on the phone from Amsterdam. "One should always have the same kind of technical finish that [traditional composers] had in their language.

"After that, it is simply a question of being thick-headed and stubborn, and writing what you feel you need to write over and above what fashion dictates at that point."

From his Third Symphony to his children's operas (including "Where the Wild Things Are"), Knussen has stuck to his own instincts, something composers from the generation before him impressed upon him.

Knussen has written (and as of press time is still finishing) a violin concerto to be premiered by Pinchas Zukerman. The work was co-commissioned by the PSO and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The 49-year-old has charted a stylistic course and has stuck to it over his career, but he is still amazed at the glacier's pace that it takes for a work to be accepted.

"Very often, something fresh is seen as a reaction to the other music at that time, he says. "It takes 10, probably 20 years for something to be seen to have its own value, regardless of what was going on at the time."

This, of course, means that the works aren't really "contemporary" by the time they do become canonical, receiving additional hearings beyond a debut. That can be a bitter pill to swallow, especially when some dated and inferior works refuse to leave the canon.

"I feel that the problem today is that the working repertoire doesn't expand that much," he says. "Therefore, pieces that ought to be familiar by now are not familiar enough that someone accepts them. We are just now accepting into the standard repertory pieces from the 1940s, like 'Peter Grimes' or Symphony in Three Movements of Stravinsky."

One of the problems here, says Toeplitz, is the need to appease as many members of the audience as possible. "In most cases it has do with trying to balance the programming for the public. Sometimes there are practical considerations with rehearsals. It is strategy. If we had done the programs of this year and next year during the past 20 years, we would now probably be much more adventurous than we are."

The slow track for contemporary music stems from many reasons.

"It is probably because of the conservatism of many promoters and partly because, paradoxically, there is too much demand for something new at all cost," says Knussen. "It is much better, somehow, for a promoter to put on a first performance than a second, or especially a fourth or fifth, 10th or 20th. There was a tradition in the States of people like [Serge] Koussevitzky and [Leopold] Stokowski really sticking with a composer over a number of years. There are not that many people who do that now."

There are more composers working now than ever before, probably more than in the entire 18th century, but Knussen feels it would be best if we could let the chaff go to the wind. "There are relatively few works that demand repertoire status, and there is not enough distinction between what is stunning and something merely quite good."

Knussen's pessimism is buoyed here and there by pockets of good news, often a surprise.

"Originally, I wanted to end my Pittsburgh Symphony program with Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements," he says. "Apparently, Mariss Jansons came back and said that wasn't modern enough. So I picked the Henze Fifth, which deserves repertoire status. It is a stunning piece. A living composer is now considered as a modern classic."

That's the point, isn't it?