Music Reviews : 3 World Premieres From New Music Group

The composer who names a piece “Song of Penance” is taking a real risk on some easy jokes. Tod Machover, however, would seem to have little need to make reparations for his new viola concerto, as committed before a large and eager crowd Monday at the Japan America Theatre, by the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group and soloist Kim Kashkashian.

Long on energy, varied in influences and firmly directed in one sweeping movement, “Song of Penance” made a big sonic impact on its first hearing. It fuses live acoustic, electronic and prerecorded sounds into a rich, seamless fabric and-- mirabile dictu --seems shorter than it really is.

It is also almost an anti-solo vehicle. However much influence the sensor-laden Kashkashian actually had on the music, in practice her contributions seemed distant and largely impersonal, emerging from speakers as just another element in a computer-controlled mix. It didn’t help that Machover’s spatially focused amplification system effectively excluded large groups of the audience to either side and in the balcony from the full experience.

Indeed, Kashkashian’s live viola often seemed simply a descant to Karol Bennett’s taped soprano, which carries the text by Rose Moss in a generally agitated, only intermittently comprehensible torrent of exclamatory raptures. In quiet, reflective moments with the woodwinds, Kashkashian projected lyric poise, and she fiddled bravely in the ebullient, high-flying hoedown which caps this very affirmative penance.

Stephen Mosko conducted a small chamber orchestra of subsidiary soloists in the highly interactive accompaniment. Machover’s skillful handling of the acoustic band is almost as pertinent as his electronic wizardry, and certainly more economical.

The room-rattling sound and kinetic rush of “Song of Penance” was well set up by Byong-kon Kim’s “Reflection” for a mixed sextet.

It features sophisticated, slippery textures and characterful ensemble sonorities glowing quietly at beginning and end, surrounding some assertive generic instrumental dialectics. Mosko led a sensitive premiere performance.

The other premierewas Arthur Jarvinen’s “Philifor Honeycombed With Childishness,” a set of variations in search of a theme. The initially fragmented material acquires coherence impressively and intriguingly up through a strong, lyric oboe cadenza, but then its development is prolonged past all interest.

Carolyn Hove supplied the fluent, poised oboe solos, dominating an ensemble marked by attractive and original unison combinations.

Completing the generous program was Olly Wilson’s “A City Called Heaven,” virtually a three-movement chamber symphony. Mosko and the New Music Group caught and enhanced all the swinging implications of the first movement, though the tricky finale was not always equally tight. The middle movement seems to strive for serenity, but in this case at least, found only ennui.