Celebrating Stucky’s 50th Birthday in Fine Form

Steven Stucky has been serving the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s new music program in one capacity or another since 1988--practically an eternity as such positions go. So they held a 50th birthday party for him Monday night at the Japan America Theatre, and had him select and conduct a program in the tradition of Composer’s Choice, the direct forerunner of the current Green Umbrella Series.

It was a remarkably unified set of works with similar instrumentation and a mostly similar conception of sound. You could hear the family resemblance of Stucky’s beautiful new “Ad Parnassum,” in its West Coast premiere, to the pieces of Jacob Druckman and Witold Lutoslawski later in the evening. And extending the dynastic theme, “Char Fragments” by 25-year-old English composer Joseph Phibbs--a student of Stucky at Cornell--also seemed to grow from this aesthetic.

Like much late-period Lutoslawski, “Ad Parnassum” was loaded with passages of lingering dissonant stasis that vibrate with color, one instrument melting into another, and it rose to a climactic cymbal crash before fading. Phibbs’ work, a world premiere, was sparely scored and inward, but also concerned with evocative swirls of color.

With Heather Buck’s lovely lyrical soprano in the lead, Druckman’s “Counterpoise”--his last major work in its West Coast premiere--found him sensuously decorating the sustained lines of four poems by Emily Dickinson and Guillaume Apollinaire, highlighted by a humorously sexy “Salome” setting. Stucky’s “Boston Fancies” departed somewhat from the prevailing language, with passages of repose alternating with choppy, Stravinsky-like rhythms.

Yet as good as much of this music was, Lutoslawski’s “Chain 1” blew the rest of the program away. This is a great work: its clearly defined structure and its tightly controlled “free” form builds to a riot of color with seemingly effortless economy and emotional force. Stucky’s swift, expert conducting emphasized its pointillistic humor, and the Philharmonic New Music Group gave it a sharp, gutsy ride.