GROUP TAKES AIM AT 20TH CENTURY

Don’t get the wrong impression about the 20th Century Consort. As artistic director Christopher Kendall says of the East Coast-based ensemble, “The performers in the group tend not to be specialists in 20th-Century music.”

While this approach may seem odd, Kendall finds it not only logical but central to the success of the consort, which makes its local debut Saturday at Schoenberg Hall, UCLA.

“This aspect of the group is a reflection of my inclinations and the way the group was formed and developed,” Kendall explained during a recent conversation from his St. Louis home. “We are all active in the performance of other repertory. We all maintain a connection with the past.”

The 35-year-old conductor says that this “combined palette of musical activities” by the various members of the group means that the performances “place a premium on fundamental musicality that develops from playing the music that is part of the tradition.”

On Saturday, works ranging from Webern’s Four Pieces for violin and piano (1910) to William Doppmann’s “Spring Songs” (1981) will be presented by five members of the consort--soprano Carmen Pelton, violinist Barbara Sonies, clarinetist Arne Running, pianist Lambert Orkis and percussionist Thomas Jones.

From its inception in 1975, the consort has been a loose-knit aggregation of instrumentalists and singers. “The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is a good analogy,” Kendall agrees. “We started with a combination of National Symphony players and others from New York and the Washington area. Some had worked together in other contexts, and some we knew from reputation. Still, there was a lot of personnel experimentation.”

With the flexibility of performers comes a flexibility in repertory-- quite definitely part of the original plan, says Kendall: “The range of instruments chosen by modern composers is wide and varied.”

According to Kendall, the repertory choices say as much about the group as they do about contemporary music. “What we play is an important way in which our interests come out. We don’t go heavy on the music of the ‘50s and ‘60s, which departed from traditional forms and materials--music that was self-consciously ‘avant-garde.’ We don’t eschew that repertory, but it doesn’t dominate our programming.”

By example, Kendall points to the UCLA event--one in which he will not participate. “The program is not taking an ideological stance. We are working with the particular people who are coming out.”

The opening piece, “Apprehensions” by Israeli-born Shulamit Ran (now a faculty member at the University of Chicago), is “a real tour de force,” Kendall notes. Scored for soprano, clarinet and piano, the piece uses poetry by Sylvia Plath written in the last year of her tragic life. “I guess we’re taking a chance by opening with that,” Kendall acknowledges. “It’s dangerous--and a challenge--to ask people to open their ears and their feelings.

“But then we’ll follow it with one of the most fun, accessible pieces imaginable--Stravinsky’s ‘L’Histoire du Soldat,’ in its trio version.”

The second half is devoted to “Ever-livin’ Rhythm” for percussion and tape by Californian Neil Rolnick, the Webern pieces and Seattle-based composer-pianist Doppmann’s “Spring Songs”--”one of the most special, magical pieces we’ve encountered, using texts by, among others, Chaucer and John Lennon.

“We try to avoid the strictly cerebral, intellectual program,” Kendall points out. “There is a need to keep music a living art. We have a sense of urgency about that.”