MUSIC REVIEW : Symphony Meets UCSD Composer’s Subtle Demands

The music of some contemporary composers virtually demands the listener’s attention. Charles Wuorinen’s supercharged rhythms and the insistent iterations of Philip Glass come immediately to mind. However, when UC San Diego composer Roger Reynolds fashions a score, it beckons in the subtle manner of an exquisite bonsai that invites closer scrutiny.

Thursday evening at the university’s Mandeville Auditorium, the San Diego Symphony presented two of Reynolds’ orchestral contributions, including “Whispers Out of Time” for string orchestra, the piece that won the composer a 1989 Pulitzer Prize. It was the work’s first American performance by a professional orchestra, and the concert was the symphony’s second offering in its Pulitzer series devoted to contemporary American music.

A sizable audience compensated for the mere handful of patrons who turned out for last month’s inaugural Pulitzer concert with Wuorinen.

True to its title, “Whispers Out of Time” does not shout but, despite its sparse texture and austere, monochromatic timbre, it is densely packed with ideas. Divided into six carefully balanced movements, “Whispers” insinuates Gustav Mahler’s melancholic resignation--Mahler is obliquely quoted--and invites comparison to the spiritual aspirations of late Beethoven. Its unrelieved intensity, however, places great demands on the listener.

Working with small, fragmentary motifs, Reynolds either suspends them in a delicate--albeit atonal--tapestry or unravels them in layered but rarely contrapuntal strata. Although he structured “Whispers” like a concerto grosso, the interplay between the solo group and the orchestra seemed far less codified than any Baroque or neoclassical concerto grosso.

The concert’s four able string soloists were violinist Janos Negyesy, cellist Peter Farrell and bassist Bertram Turetzky, all from the UCSD music faculty, as well as symphony principal violist Yun-Jie Liu.

The program’s second half was devoted to Reynolds’ “Transfigured Wind II,” a 1984 work for full orchestra, flute soloist, and prepared tape. More extroverted and expansive than “Whispers,” this earlier opus is a virtuoso fantasy in a single movement, as rich and demanding as a giant Jackson Pollock oil painting.

Vibrant brass and percussion underscore the work’s pointillistic idiom, a factor that no doubt influenced flutist John Fonville’s metallic attacks and brightly articulated interpretation of the solo figuration. Reynolds’ evocative tape part, as winning an electronic construction as I have heard in many years of electronic music auditing, acted as a buffer between the assertive solo and the intense orchestra sections. Reynolds integrated these three forces skillfully, allowing the tape solo to appear to emanate from the flute’s subtle cadence.

The orchestra responded generously and earnestly to Reynolds’ demanding music. Guest conductor Harvey Sollberger clearly knew and loved each score, although his manned conducting style and restlessness on the podium undermined a precise sense of ensemble, a factor that clearly compromised an otherwise genial reading of J. S. Bach’s Fourth Brandenburg Concerto, which opened the program.