Music Reviews : EAR Unit Premieres Work at Bing Theater

Adventuresome, premiere-packed programs are not unusual for the California EAR Unit. Seldom do they hang together so effectively, however, as the offering Wednesday at Bing Theater of the L.A. County Museum of Art.

Here the cumulative effect of the five assembled pieces was that of a mega-symphony of almost classical structure and purpose, though emphatically post-modern in style.

Bernardo Feldman’s “Caudal de Poesia” formed the emotional core of the program, a great, multi-sectional, elegiac adagio composed in homage to Feldman’s father. Powered and shaped by brooding lyrical impulses assigned to the cello, it also exploits deliberately naive electronic additions and a few plaintive vocal lines.

Erica Duke-Kirkpatrick was the poignantly accomplished cellist and simple singer in this first performance, backed with understated virtuosity by the rest of the Unit--Dorothy Stone, flute; James Rohrig, reeds; Robin Lorentz, violin; Amy Knoles and Arthur Jarvinen, percussion; Gloria Cheng, keyboard.

The concert began with the local premiere of Cornelius Cardew’s “Volo Solo” (1965), an abstract, architectural piece built around the ratio of chittering sound blocks to silence, and continued with Kathryn Alexander’s “And the Whole Air Is Tremulous” for flute and tape. The former emphasized rigor and the latter fantasy, elements that the Feldman piece then combined.

After some false starts, Stone got her flute duet with tape moving in nervous eloquence, and the Unit hammered out “Volo Solo” in a sort of chill frenzy.

Baudoin de Jaer’s “Stream String Quartet” is, of course, the scherzo in the larger scheme, an impudent, monomaniacal satire. Stone, Cheng, Knoles and Jarvinen bravely fiddled on violins, their scratchy efforts goosed by Rohrig’s clarinet before a descent into climactic chaos.

At the end was “Waves of Talya” by Kamran Ince, a slick ensemble piece dedicated to Brahms, whose influence sounded far less than that of John Adams. Stephen Mosko conducted a cool, propulsive performance.