MUSIC REVIEW : Modern Progress Under Salonen’s Green Umbrella

“A ll impartial musicians and music lovers were in perfect agreement that never was anything as incoherent, shrill, chaotic and ear-splitting. . . .”

I confess. Silly me. My mind did some wandering Monday night at the Japan America Theatre where Esa-Pekka Salonen led members of the Philharmonic elite and a couple of knowledgeable guests through a program of thorny modernist challenges.

It was the final Green Umbrella program of the season. Salonen--a composer himself--was in his element.

But I didn’t always concentrate on the complex music at hand. I kept thinking about a Counterpunch essay that appeared in these pages last week. An unhappy reader lamented the pervasive ugliness of most modern music and, worse, the fact that many critics applaud it.

The Counterpuncher probably would not have liked much about the pieces that were basking here in the shade of Salonen’s umbrella: progressive compositions by Chen Yi, formerly of Beijing, by an all-American named Fred Lerdahl and by a Scandinavian visitor called Jouni Kaipainen. The reader probably would have found little to soothe the savage breast even in some golden oldies of Igor Stravinsky.

Her reactions might have matched those of the writer quoted at the top of this review: a Berlin critic covering the premiere of Beethoven’s “Fidelio.” The source, of course, is that redoubtable centenarian Nicolas Slonimsky.

The pervasive problem is simple. Audiences in general want to hear the sort of comfy music they know and love. They don’t want to expand their hand-me-down concepts of sound, form, harmony, melody or rhythm. They don’t want their ears stretched, much less their minds.

They want today’s music to sound like yesterday’s.

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But yesterday’s music disturbed yesterday’s audiences. It’s a sobering thought. If contemporary composers did nothing but look backward, music would become very boring. And perhaps very dead.

A famous Berlin critic in the 19th Century heard his first Chopin etude and came up with this notable judgment:

“Excruciating cacophony.”

OK. OK. You want to know about Monday’s concert.

It began with a 12-minute perpetuo mobile study in rhythmic ripples and sonic swirls, colorfully and cleverly scored by Chen for a few winds, percussion, strings and electrified piano. I found it exhilarating.

Another listener might have had a different reaction.

“Strident phrases pounded out by hitting each note a blow on the head.”

That was how a major New York critic described his city’s first “La Boheme.”

The Stravinsky survey that followed began with the sweet, exotic melismas of “Pastorale,” a vocalise begun in 1907 and revised in 1923. Janice Felty sang it with melting sensuality. Then her miniature vocal recital turned dry and abstract with three Shakespeare songs (1953), starkly whimsical with “The Owl and the Pussycat” (1966), folksy primal with “Pribaoutki” (1914). The mezzo-soprano performed with pungency, charm and guts, as needed.

“The greatest bluffer of the century and of all future millennia.”

The composer who inspired that critical label, incidentally, was Brahms. Not Stravinsky.

Lerdahl’s mercurial “Marches” of 1992, which followed, sounded a bit thick and cluttered in context. Still, one had to be fascinated by the overlapping ideas, the constantly evolving textures, the subtle quotations and the sometimes cataclysmic climaxes.

There is a lot going on in this intimate 16-minute escapade for clarinet, piano, violin and cello in varying combinations and permutations. Most of it sounds devastatingly difficult, and some of it sounds novel.

“The harmonies are so obtrusively crude that no number of wrong notes could be detected by the subtlest listener.”

That, of course, was a London critic’s response to Schumann’s Variations for two pianos.

The purported piece de resistance came after intermission with the U.S. premiere of “Carpe diem!,” a concerto for bravura clarinet and matching mini-orchestra by Salonen’s 37-year-old countryman, Jouni Kaipainen. It is a highly propulsive mood study that swings from nervous reverie to feverish dance to violently percussive climax, all of it dominated by virtuosic sliding and slurping and doodling for the dauntless soloist.

On first hearing, it is difficult to separate the cliches from the inspirations, but there is no denying Kaipainen’s craft, or his sense of drama. In case anyone cares, the Latin title, untranslated by the anonymous annotator, means “seize the day.”

Lorin Levee, whose high school yearbook photo adorned the program, seized it to play the convoluted solos with non-stop nonchalant brilliance. Salonen and a very busy, very able instrumental ensemble provided a dazzling expressive framework.

“This is music of the future that, in its hydrophobia, scorns logic, wallows in torpor . . . and collapses in dissonant convulsions.”

Kaipainen may indeed have written music of the future. But unlike poor Tchaikovsky, whose first piano concerto was thus assessed, the visiting Finn seems to harbor no fear of water.