MUSIC REVIEW : New Hartke Sextet Packs a Wallop

Judging new works is a fascinating occupation, a game usually reserved for the analytical side of one’s brain, not for its emotional counterpart. Hearing, considering and describing recently written pieces is more like solving a puzzle than having a revelation.

Sometimes, however, both sides of the brain are engaged; sometimes, a new work touches as well as titillates.

Stephen Hartke’s obtusely titled instrumental sextet, “Wir kussen ihnen tausendmal die Hande,”--I kiss your hands a thousand times, Mozart’s closing to all the letters he wrote his father--lasts only nine minutes, but carries a mighty emotional wallop.

As heard in its world premiere by an ensemble from Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Thursday night at Ambassador Auditorium, the sextet is atonal but melodious.

It achieves an arching line, exact lyric point and noble sentiments within its first minute, then maintains quiet, apparently inevitable progress through a meditative musical scenario thereafter. The composer, speaking from the stage before the performance, described it as his message to Mozart. As such, it could hardly be more loving, or effective.

Fortepianist Melvyn Tan (who played a Mozart concerto earlier in the evening), hornist Richard Todd, violinist Ralph Morrison, violist Roland Kato and cellist Douglas Davis gave the piece a clear and concentrated premiere, but the most important member of the sextet turned out to be Gary Gray, who handled the focal point of the work--the clarinet solos--with stunning ease and as mellow and gorgeous a sound as may be possible on that instrument.

Donald Crockett, who shares the title of LACO composer in residence with Hartke this season, conducted.

What made this evening special was that the rest of the program, led by Iona Brown, went as well as the new work (one of four Mozart bicentennial commissions from LACO this year).

At the fortepiano, Tan gave a beauteous and fluent reading of Mozart’s Concerto No. 12 in A, one as musicianly as it was stylish. He was assisted neatly by Brown and a reduced ensemble from the 27-member (on this occasion) orchestra.

On the podium, and using a baton--something she began to do only last week--Brown closed the program with a bright and detailed reading of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, one directional but not blunt, tidy but not sterile. The orchestra played splendidly, even in those moments when it responded to its conductor’s beat-heavy conducting by hitting those beats evenly (as in the Gavotte).

From her first-violinist’s chair, at the beginning of the evening, Brown presided over another bright, stylish performance, this of Handel’s Concerto Grosso in D minor, Opus 3, No. 5. Readings this lively, alert and nuanced strengthen one’s dedication to what one billboard calls “Music by Dead Guys.” At LACO, the dead guys seem to be alive.