Music Reviews : Shaw Conducts Pomona College Centennial Concert

Vladimir Ussachevsky, his biographers tell us, writes two kinds of music: electronic works and traditional choral compositions. In the second category is Ussachevsky’s newest piece, “To the Young,” which was given its world premiere performances Thursday in twin concerts celebrating the 100th anniversary of Pomona College.

Conducted by another distinguished alumnus of the college, Robert Shaw, these concerts paralleled a similar occasion, in Feb., 1938, when Shaw (who was graduated from Pomona that year) served as narrator in the first performance of Ussachevsky’s “Jubilee Cantata” at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the college.

At the second of the Thursday concerts, in that most comfortable and civilized listening-room, Bridges Hall of Music (“Little” Bridges, as they say) on the Claremont campus, Ussachevsky’s new work impressed in its directness and brevity. Scored for double chorus, orchestra and soprano solo, and using surrealistic texts by Denise Levertov, the 12-minute cantata deals in a dissonant idiom that often lands, as the composer points out in his program note, on triad-based cadences.

If ambivalence is the theme of Ussachevsky’s collage of Levertov’s poems, its musical counterpart emerges constantly. Cautious optimism is the theme; fearful doubt, the subtext.

Led purposefully by Shaw, 160 members of the Pomona College choir and glee club, with the 64-member College Symphony, made the new work attractive and comprehensible, though words did not seem to be top-priority in the singing. Gwendolyn Lytle was the radiant soprano soloist. The 76-year-old composer happily shared the bows.

The major part of this event--occupying, in total, less than an hour--proved to be a splendid and poignant performance of the Requiem by the late Maurice Durufle. Noble, clear and handsome sounds emerged from both chorale and orchestra, and a divination of meaning colored all the singing and playing. In “Pie Jesu,” Shaw chose to feature the entire section of women’s voices instead of a single soloist; the results confirmed the wisdom of that decision.