MUSIC REVIEW : Het Trio Closes Monday Evening Series

Music written between 1976 and ’91 by composers born between 1927 and ’60 composed the program at the final Monday Evening Concert of the season, this week in Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The performers were the members of Het Trio--meaning, simply, in Dutch, the Trio--a touring ensemble from the Netherlands specializing in new music. The composers--all still living--were Jan Rokus van Roosendael, Theo Loevendie, Lucca Francesconi, Jay Alan Yim, Paolo Perezzani, Ton de Leeuw, Perry Goldstein and Franco Donatoni, writers from the Netherlands, Italy and the United States.

Much of this music, like the players who perform it--pianist Rene Eckhardt, flutist Harrie Starreveld and bass clarinetist Harry Sparnaay--has a background in jazz, which would account for the atmosphere surrounding most of the works heard Monday.

More than that: A characteristic rhythmic drive, as well as an instrumental approach usually eschewing sustained sounds, revealed the general jazz orientation present.

As far as it went, then, this agenda of interesting music for an oddball combination amused and engrossed the listener.

Among the three most amusing was Perezzani’s “Il Volto della Notte” (U.S. premiere), which juxtaposes--sometimes on the same page--extraordinary lyricism with hallucinatory musical violence in a mix that recalls no other composer so much as one from a previous century, Robert Schumann.

Like some works of Schumann, Perezzani’s trio reveals a personality split between great repose and almost frightening hyperactivity; it also requires superior technical equipment on the part of each player.

Ton de Leeuw’s emotionally resonant Trio (also U.S. premiere) shows even more facets of personality, but these not at war with each other. Songfulness, aggression and linearity here coexist peacefully, and in an engaging and fascinating blend.

The world premiere performance of Goldstein’s jazz-paced, abrasive, ultimately cathartic “Tableau and Talisman” revealed the American composer’s strong talent and considerable accomplishment. His is a name to remember.

This program also included solo display pieces for each of the three members, plus Donatoni’s jazz-derived, nine-minute, million-note, finally boring “Het,” written for the group two years ago.