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Music Review: PNME gives uneven but powerful new-music performance
Monday, April 17, 2000 By Andrew Druckenbrod, Post-Gazette Classical Music Writer
Why new music? We have plenty of compositions from Beethoven, Bach and Brahms that speak to eternal truths and herald the human condition. Or so most people feel about contemporary classical music, if they consider it at all -- even those who value newness in everything from technology to theater.
The more new music I hear -- the latest being Saturday night's Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble concert at the Jewish Community Center in Squirrel Hill -- the more I believe that the classical music audience in America sells its own experiences short by continuing to largely dismiss it. This concert, for one, had a meager attendance.
Sure, many contemporary pieces are less than brilliant, but so were the majority of compositions in Mozart and Beethoven's time. And for that matter, so is most of the new stuff on the radio, in movie theaters, in playhouses and in bookstores.
That we are less interested in sifting through the bad to find the good in art music remains bewildering. But it ultimately keeps us from a look at modern life through the mind of a composer who lives it with us, mediated through the cathartic experience that only music can bring. Beethoven's Fifth will forever offer wisdom and hope, but he didn't use a cell phone, worry about environmental devastation or pay taxes. An exceptional contemporary work hits home a bit harder because it speaks to us on common ground.
Conducted by Brad Lubman, himself a composer, two of the works on the evening's program tapped into that phenomenon. The first was Randall Woolf's "Shakedown."
For well over half of this piece for strings, winds and piano, the music is in perpetual motion, driven by a beat the composer describes as inspired by "Detroit-style boogie and blues." But the piece feels empty and soulless in its mechanical precision, though it's seductive in a way similar to the bright lights of Las Vegas or Times Square. Then, out of the blue, that frenetic music stops and a most simple yet poignant clarinet melody soars sorrowfully out of the reduced texture. Perhaps because the tune comes unexpectedly or perhaps because of its modest beauty, it stirred powerful emotions.
I think, though, that the moment touched me so because it revealed the melancholy state lying underneath our modern, fast-paced and insecure lives. Far from being an in-your-face condemnation, "Shakedown" sympathizes with us, alerting us to the situation, but allowing us to reflect upon it at our own pace.
Though the players had some trouble staying together in "Shakedown," and the Roland keyboard accompanying the clarinet figure was too loud, they were on target in Eric Moe's piano concerto "Kicking and Screaming." Lubman proved himself to be a first-rate conductor here, but it surely helped that the University of Pittsburgh composer sat at the piano. This work also resonates well with today. Unlike a classical concerto's solo-tutti arrangement, Moe's piece is a microcosm of the politics of real life.
With a vigorous part, the pianist establishes relationships one by one with various instruments of the orchestra, sometimes struggling to do so. This was the case with the percussionist in one remarkable passage where the pianist tries to outdo the trap-set playing. There's optimism in this work, as the charismatic piano eventually brings everyone into agreement in the finale.
Lubman's predilections for 1950s and '60s modernism made his "Ranting & Raving!" feel less pertinent. The work, commissioned by PNME, had its professional premiere. Each instrument does its own thing, note-wise, but follows the same beat and dynamics. The idea is that, like a Rorschach test, something striking will emerge from this dizzying and clever writing, but nothing did for me.
Morton Feldman's "For Frank O'Hara" is a stark work examining color in a static environment, but PNME didn't give it the seamless performance that it needs to work.
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