MUSIC REVIEW : Boulez Leads Green Umbrella Concert

Never underestimate the unifying strength of star power and repertory classics, particularly in the factionalized field of contemporary music. The Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group packed the Japan America Theatre Monday for a Green Umbrella concert led by Pierre Boulez, and featuring important pieces by Messiaen and Varese.

Though much honored by imitation, Varese’s “Deserts,” “Ecuatorial” and “Ionization” are hardly concert staples. The chance to hear them together was undoubtedly a powerful draw, although their realization left at least one listener more impressed with their historical importance than their purely musical allure.

That was most true of “Deserts,” performed without the groundbreaking electronic interpolations. Boulez emphasized the inexorable large-scale pulse of tension and release, but despite the glittering contrasts achieved only a sense of a massive mechanism at industrious work.

Enlarged brass, woodwind and percussion sections from the Philharmonic gave him a bold and almost overbearing reading of the big, full force gestures, and occasional moments of timidity in the quiet solos. For all its sonic impact, however, the hard-edged thrust simply underscored the sense of relentless pattern-cutting.

Boulez developed the more volatile, earthy drama of “Ecuatorial” with a sort of paradoxically purposeful impetuosity. He generated powerful linear motivations without compromising the organic explosiveness of the piece.

He seemed to view the vocal part as a kind of distant effect. Twelve men of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, pushed almost offstage into the far right curtains and with the small shell supporting the percussion on the opposite side, sounded remote and underpowered against another brightly blaring instrumental effort and not in complete agreement about the articulation of either text or notes.

With “Ionization,” things came together in a compact, well-defined performance. Boulez shaped a clean, uncluttered structure, and his percussion orchestra gave a reading of brilliant urgency, justifiably encored.

The first half of the generous program was devoted to Messiaen’s reflective chamber epic “Quatour pour la fin du temps.” Violinist Camille Avellano, cellist Barry Gold, clarinetist David Howard and pianist Gloria Cheng--who performed the piece 18 months ago for the Philharmonic Chamber Music Society--caught much of its mystical raptures in a warm, expansive and quite risky account.

Some of the risks of introspection were fully revealed when the theater air-conditioning kicked into overdrive during Howard’s lyrically fragile solo movement, and remained an intrusive, heavy-breathing menace for the rest of the evening. It did not seem to faze the concentrated ensemble, however, although intonation in some of the soft passages of the scatting “Dance of Fury” frayed.

Environmental hazards aside, this was an immensely moving flight into musical theology, giving life to Messiaen’s vision of eternity, a thoroughly characterized performance of highly personal music, offered in tribute to the composer who died last month.