Music and Dance Reviews : Pierre Boulez Closes Green Umbrella Series

Like a courier bearing transfusions of fresh blood at the eleventh hour, Pierre Boulez, visiting the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the end of a long and wearying season, brings more than the promise of survival. He offers hope beyond the current crisis.

Boulez has done this before, and with his familiar magic. Still, the conductor/composer’s presence on our musical scene, most recently at the closing of the Philharmonic’s 1988-89 Green Umbrella series in Japan America Theatre, has a sense of the miraculous about it.

As always, Boulez on Monday night brought something new--this time a recent work by a protege from IRCAM in Paris, Marc-Andre Dalbavie, “Diademes.”

Three years ago Dalbavie, who was born in 1961, created this large-scale chamber piece for solo (electronically altered) viola, electronic ensemble and instruments--the performers numbering 18. “Diademes” juxtaposes massive blocks of sound moving heavily through time, something aurally analogous to the motion of continental shelves as they shift their weight, slowly.

But “Diademes” is no behemoth, despite its 27-minute length. Dalbavie seems to use his forces cleverly, and in contrasting combinations, and the electronics--ubiquitous but seldom overpowering--are practically subtle, as these things go. What this promising young composer will come up with, over the long haul, one cannot predict. This piece, however, seemed to deserve its spot.

The able performers at this West Coast premiere included violist Dale Hikawa.

Not surprisingly, the remainder of the program surveyed more familiar territory with fresh ears.

Performed in memory of Lawrence Morton, Stravinsky’s Eight Instrumental Miniatures (1962) again reminded one listener of the atmosphere of adventurousness that prevailed over all of Morton’s musical projects--most memorably at the Ojai Festival and at Monday Evening Concerts--in his heyday.

Even more bracing, Boulez’s subsequent, and probing, reading of Schoenberg’s Serenade, Opus 24, restored the characterful qualities of this cherishable septet.

But the high point of this generous program was the revival of Boulez’s own “Improvisation sur Mallarme” No. 2, as sung by soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson, with Lou Anne Neill (harp), Zita Carno (celesta), Gloria Cheng (piano), and percussionists Mitchell Peters, Raynor Carroll, Mark Zimoski, Karen Ervin, Charles DeLancey and Erik Forrester.

The work remains impenetrable, fascinating, poignant and mysterious, and the care lavished upon it by Bryn-Julson, conductor Boulez and their associates brought out all its facets.