MUSIC REVIEW : Touch of Levity Gives Concert a Welcome Lift

Humor is probably the least-encountered element in contemporary music. It is difficult to pinpoint just when humor fell out of fashion, but in the 18th Century and early 19th Century, respectable composers turned out comic operas by the dozen. Even in the purely instrumental genres, Mozart’s “Musical Joke” and Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony are but two examples of the playful attitude towards musical convention.

Now, however, it is no mere coincidence that the interchangeable vernacular term for contemporary classical music is “serious” music. Just try to imagine an opera buffa by Alban Berg, Elliott Carter or Pierre Boulez.

Wednesday evening at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium, the contemporary music ensemble SONOR provided a welcome relief from new music’s earnest pall with Anthony Korf’s song cycle “Nothing but Love Songs.”

To be sure, SONOR opened its final concert of the season with Michael Gandolfi’s dour, ascetic nonet “Personae” and finished the evening with Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Kontra-Punkte,” the quintessential 1950s icon of acerbic cerebral pointillism. But Korf’s lively opus for soprano and small chamber orchestra displayed a winning, humorous countenance, from the instruments’ unabashed flirting with pop styles to the vocal soloist’s ironic intoning of seven amatory poems by Thomas Hardy, William Butler Yeats, John Hollander and Amy Lowell.

The 38-year-old New York composer demonstrated that, with sufficient vision, consonances can be used playfully and unpredictably to excellent effect.

Soprano Carol Plantamura, who eloquently sang Arnold Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” with SONOR earlier this season, savored Korf’s witty vocal line with sophisticated, articulate declamation--she is the Maria Callas of Sprechstimme. Guest conductor Keith Humble, who evidently relished the composer’s humor with equal conviction, kept the work’s delicate, precise instrumental textures in pristine alignment.

Drake Mabry’s “11.10.83” for solo clarinet proved to be a tour de force that elicited knowing smiles--it satirized all those vapid, flashy clarinet showpieces--as well as admiration for the soloist’s virtuosity. Clarinetist Michael Richards, for whom the piece was written, had the supple technique and sang-froid to sail through its athletic jumps and staccato iterations. In the middle section, he delicately conjured its eerie multiphonics.

“Sum over Histories,” a recently completed chamber piece by UCSD graduate composer John Stevens, reconstructed works of J. S. Bach, Beethoven and Webern according to Stevens’ mathematical formulas. The result was a fragmented dismembering that stirred in this listener the desire to hear the originals again, preferably before Stevens’ work ground to its conclusion.

New York pianist Aleck Karis brought his authoritative technique to the keyboard solo in Stockhausen’s “Kontra-Punkte.” Karis’ strong, clear attacks and wide spectrum of colors enlivened the performance considerably. Resident conductor Thomas Nee kept the pace taut and the ensemble precisely focused.