AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA : GLASS PREMIERE AT CARNEGIE HALL

The American Composers Orchestra may not be the most refined or the most prestigious symphonic ensemble in New York. But it certainly must be the most idealistic and the most adventurous.

In its 11-year history, it has offered works by more than 160 American composers, 60 world premieres among them. It has been involved in the commissioning of at least 44 compositions, two of which have won Pulitzer Prizes. The record is impressive.

Sunday afternoon at the newly--and controversially--refurbished Carnegie Hall, the orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies’ appreciative baton mustered a stimulating, broad-ranging and not exactly uplifting program.

It began with some harmless Broadway nostalgia via the overture to Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun” (in the primitive-glitzy pit-band arrangement of Robert Russell Bennett). Then, having attended to show-biz-as-unusual, the youthful instrumentalists turned to serious matters: the world premiere of a massive song cycle by Nancy Laird Chance, a revival of Henry Cowell’s seldom-heard “Synchrony” and the first performance of Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto--the ultra-fashionable minimalist’s latest exercise in simplistic noodling.

It was the Glass premiere, of course, that attracted the most attention. As an exceptionally stoic Paul Zukovsky introduced the endless solo arpeggios and Davies cranked out the formula accompaniment, solemn heads in the audience began instantly to bob and sway. The reverently susceptible ones closed their eyes and assumed dutiful trance-like poses. Many a scholarly soul consigned profound observations to ever-ready note pads (surely the scribes weren’t all critics). A few iconoclasts undertook conspicuous premature departures.

There were, alas, no riots.

The Violin Concerto turned out to be one of Glass’ quieter, gentler, more delicate inventions. It uses a perfectly conventional, unamplified orchestra and it makes a lot of pretty sounds. Pretty boring sounds.

The first of the three motoric movements sets up the basic busy-music-that-goes-nowhere pattern. It is sweet and it stops, for no particular reason, just in time. Then comes a quicker variation that sounds for all the world like that pesky yuletide “Carol of the Bells” with the phonograph needle stuck somewhere around the fourth measure. The agitated finale smothers the stellar fiddle in a blanket of repetitive rhythmic doodles, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

The devout were obviously moved.

By comparison, Cowell’s rugged and complex little symphonic drama sounded like a brave exploration of the aesthetics of the future. It actually appealed to the brain as well as the gut. It offered neither spiritual nor emotional Novocain.

Under the circumstances, it was sobering to realize that the premiere had taken place in Paris 56 years ago. The conductor on that occasion, not incidentally, was Nicolas Slonimsky.

Chance’s “Odysseus” proved less significant. It merely buried a lot of strenuous Greek Sprechgesang and wailing (earnestly delivered by the baritone Allan Glassman) in a lot of standard-brand percussive murk.

The murk could be blamed, to some degree at least, on the modernized Carnegie acoustic. The historic hall used to be regarded as something of a sonic marvel. The subtlest pianissimo tones are still projected with extraordinarily mellow resonance. As is the unsettling case with many a new structure, however, forte outbursts now lose clarity of definition and tend toward the raucous. Such, at least, was the impression from an aisle seat in Row T, downstairs.

Progress strikes again.