MUSIC REVIEW : New Music Group Pays Tribute to Toru Takemitsu

Toru Takemitsu, who died Feb. 20 at age 65, mastered a musical language both ancient and modern sounding. That duality was center stage in the first half of Monday’s Green Umbrella concert at the Japan America Theatre on Monday, as the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group paid moving tribute to the eminent Japanese composer.

Cellist Daniel Rothmuller captured a compellingly plaintive voice on “Orion”; pianist Gloria Cheng conveyed the angular impressionism of “Rain Tree Sketch II” and “Litany”; “Quatrain II” came off as an elegant bit of tone poetry for quartet. In all, Takemitsu’s music proved delicate to the touch and deep in spirit.

After intermission, the program shifted to points south and west. In a repeat of performances held at UC Santa Barbara’s New Music Festival, Javier Alvarez’s “Temazcal”--for tape and maracas, dynamically performed by Ricardo Gallardo--sparkled, and Mario Lavista’s “Reflejos de la Noche,” a harmonics-laden work for string quartet, proceeded dreamily.

In an ongoing tribute to Berio’s “Sequenza” pieces, harpist Lou Anne Neill worked beautifully against type. A gripping mosaic of harmonics, dissonances and hard-edged articulation, the piece coaxes a rigorous, abstractionist persona from an instrument too often relegated to cascading prettiness.

Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra’s “Tres Fantasias,” in a West Coast premiere, mixes Latin American rhythms, mock Bach and Schoenberg. Conventionality is continually tickled by odd outbursts and sideways logic that enrich the experience. Likewise, Monday’s programmatic house mix.