MUSIC REVIEW : Green Umbrella Shelters a Soviet Revelation

Alfred Schnittke may just be the most intoxicating Soviet export since vodka.

The man is an inspired iconoclast, an unabashed showman and a dreamer. At 55 and in frail health, he writes tough, brash, eminently theatrical music. He looks shy but makes provocative statements. He wears his hair long.

For decades, he has been quietly and stubbornly exploring progressive ideas and ideals in the Soviet Union. For its part, the motherland has neglected his innovations while pointing with official pride to the tired banality of Tikhon Krennikov and the timid eclecticism of Rodion Shchedrin.

Now-- presto change-o --cultural perestroika has made Schnittke an unlikely hero, and a useful socio-political symbol, all over the world--even in Moscow. Together with Sofia Gubaidulina, a Soviet composer of less flash and perhaps more sensitivity, Schnittke has confirmed that there indeed is life after Shostakovich.

Monday night at the Japan America Theater, Los Angeles caught up with the Schnittke phenomenon. The occasion was the opening of the enterprising Green Umbrella series sponsored by the Los Angeles Philharmonic (the co-sponsorship of CalArts apparently is a crutch of the past).

The introductory vehicle took the sprawling form of Schnittke’s Fourth Symphony, first heard in the States last year at Sarah Caldwell’s Soviet-exchange festival in Boston. Written in 1984 and performed here in its original intimately scaled version, the symphony is a maze of jarring complexities, a jumble of climactic devices and a thoughtful essay in dynamic contrasts.

Significantly, it also is something of a religious statement. “I am half-Jewish, half-German,” Schnittke recently wrote. “My mother was a Catholic Volga-German. I have long been a baptized Catholic. I share the beliefs of my German forebears.”

The Fourth Symphony--a 45-minute electronically boosted crescendo--permits many detours but no interruptions. It is a canny ecumenical fusion of sacred motives, keyboard explosions, multi-layered orchestral mutterings and lyrical agonies.

It isn’t a subtle work, even though it contains lots of subtle details. It makes a mighty noise, however, and it reflects brilliant craft at every convoluted turn. It also ends with an automatic ovation.

The ovation was well deserved on Monday. Oliver Knussen conducted a virtuoso ensemble from the New Music Group with efficient authority and obvious sympathy. Zita Carno played the amplified-piano solos with precise fervor. Greg Fedderly, Dorothy-Jean Lloyd, Louis Lebherz and Jennifer Trost sang the quasiliturgical solos sensitively.

The first half of the program proved equally rewarding if less dramatic. It was devoted to recent American compositions.

Serving as neo-Romantic overture was Peter Lieberson’s “Raising the Gaze” (1989), an engaging little collection of thumping rhythms and ethereal nuances. Six Songs for Chamber Orchestra (1989) by Jorge Liderman, a 32-year-old Argentinian now on the Berkeley faculty, managed to sustain poignancy while balancing minute academic procedures with gutsy expressive impulses.

Most memorable, however, was the world premiere of “The Natural World,” an instrumental prelude and three songs for mezzo-soprano by John Harbison. Inspired by the bittersweet poetry of Robert Bly, Wallace Stevens and James Wright, Harbison created a fascinating set of musical images that manage to accommodate both nostalgia and irony.

The textures remain transparent through telling vicissitudes. The local line sometimes rests in timbral harmony with the instruments, sometimes soars in daring isolation, yet always illuminates the text. Obviously, it is time for a Harbison opera.

The composer conducted his own music with unobtrusive care. Janice Felty, Peter Sellars’ justly celebrated Dorabella, brought gleaming tone, a marvelous legato line and fine verbal point to the wide-ranging solos.

If only all modern-music programs were like this . . .

If only someone would tell me why this series is called The Green Umbrella. . . .