MONDAY EVENING OPENER : SWEDISH ENSEMBLE MAKES U.S. DEBUT

The mezzo-soprano, cellist, two percussionists and pianist had changed costumes and now wore black and white. Forming a small constellation that had the arresting features of a dramatically composed drawing or photo, they looked nothing like the random assemblage common to performances of new music.

Suffused by a low, ghostly light, the actors-musicians began on a course of theatrical gestures, activated by moaning glissandos, momentous rattles and pristine clackety-clacks. Very quickly an operatic scheme developed. Each utterance, each sound caused both a physical and emotional reaction in another member of the ensemble and in turn drew a musical answer.

The singer, in her billowing tulle gown, cringed in response to the rhythmic thwackings. She became an Olympia doll whose soundless coloratura was mimed with open-mouth stutterings. Finally, all but the leading percussionist were numbed into silent submission by the last thwack and the lights, lowered in several distinct grades, brought the spectacle to its surreal conclusion.

Thus did Sonanza, the 6-year-old Swedish chamber ensemble making its U.S. debut, end the first Monday Evening Concert of the season. The piece, Mikael Edlund’s “The Lost Jugglery,” turned out to be the most significant item of the evening at the Bing Theater, County Museum of Art.

But, it alone, could not buy back, for the city’s oldest organization dedicated to contemporary music, the prestige or quality of days gone by--as the remainder of the program proved.

Uncannily, Dorrance Stalvey, director of Monday Evening Concerts, hosted a group that suffers the same repertory problems he regularly encounters. Taken together, much of the music for Sonanza’s four-part bill was simplistic--its structure elusive, if existent at all. Thin stuff, this. It makes one long for the days of musical rebellion.

Stalvey, in fact, gave his hand away by talking to the typically sparse audience about everything but the music or the young ensemble at hand.

He noted the refurbished cafeteria that will offer what he called “nouvelle California” cuisine. He mentioned that the museum plaza will finally reopen in November, once again allowing patrons direct access to Bing Theater. And custodial management saw to it that the air-conditioning operated, so that patrons did not feel they were in a sauna.

The program, which enlisted the lyric mezzo of Maria Hoeglind in each piece, began with Arne Mellnaes’ “Nocturnes.” A setting of Blake and Shelley poems, it is a vaguely tonal reverie with occasional Sprechgesang outbursts and aleatoric flights a la “Pierrot Lunaire.”

Had it not been diluted by Paul Cooper’s “Mirrors,” a less skillfully crafted cycle than those by such other American composers as Pasatieri, Barber and Copland, its impact might have lasted. Nor did “Prelude to Breaking,” by Per Norgaard (who could be Denmark’s John Cage), offer much besides an exercise in primitivism.