MUSIC REVIEW : Green Umbrella Series Opens With Rand Steiger Concerto

The new-music community is not the monolithic society it may appear to outsiders. Rather, it is a factionalized confederacy of petty tribes, each worshiping its own jealous gods.

However, two of the major local players in the game, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and CalArts, have allied in a concert series called--for no clear reason--The Green Umbrella. The first program, Monday evening at the Japan America Theatre, drew a sizable audience, including representatives of most of the other contemporary music founts and forums in the area.

In his career, Rand Steiger, the former CalArts Wunderkind and now the Philharmonic’s Composer Fellow and a professor at the University of California, San Diego, joins some of the diverging tracks in local new music. The Green Umbrella opened with the premiere of his Double Concerto for piano and percussion.

A big, busy work of considerable sonic splash, Steiger’s concerto involves two small orchestras, as well as the two soloists. He writes for the piano as if it were a mallet instrument, and Alan Feinberg’s heroic efforts at the keyboard often sounded subordinate to, and derived from, Daniel Druckman’s energetic, almost constantly active work on marimba and vibraphone.

Steiger’s language here is a dramatic melange of tonal intimations and dense dissonance with clear rhythmic direction. Greater physical separation of his forces might enhance textural clarity and antiphonal effects, but on first hearing at least, his concerto seems an important, hard-hitting work.

The improbably belated West Coast premieres of two major works from the ‘70s completed the tight program. Frederic Rzewski’s “A Long Time Man” is a set of variations on a prison work song, for piano and orchestra. Beginning as stereotypical Americana, it is soon interrupted by enigmatic hints of darker things, which come to fruition in a maniacally minimalist “Chain Gang” section, and ends with oppressively truncated bits of the theme.

Feinberg played the solo part with committed flair and impressive control. John Harbison directed the Philharmonic New Music Group and the CalArts New Twentieth-Century Players--as he had in the Steiger piece--with an emphasis on color, allowing some lopsided balances and flagging of momentum.

Donald Martino’s Triple Concerto for clarinet, bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet is one of those hard-working, voluble pieces that command more respect than affection. William Powell, Lorin Levee and Stephen Piazza welded their instruments into a remarkably cohesive unitary protagonist, balanced in tone and usually rhythmically precise.

Larry Livingston, dean of the USC School of Music, led the Twentieth-Century Players in a taut, brisk performance, coaxing clarity, intensity and a muted sense of glee from the musicians.