Fresh Readings of Early Copland and a New Javier Alvarez Piece

Funny how the signature Copland style known through the great ballets--”Appalachian Spring” or “Rodeo”--or the Third Symphony suddenly sounds like Copland Lite when you hear some of his earlier music.

It’s all there--the sense of bracing, open vistas, the visceral excitement of urban rhythms and syncopation, the shading into tender but unsentimental emotions. But it’s more compacted and varied, and its shifts take place more quickly.

To reach a wide audience, Copland had to do nothing terribly radical. He only had to open it up a bit and give the average ear more time to linger in a sequence.

Proof was in the first Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella program of the season, Monday at Zipper Hall at the Colburn School of Performing Arts. The three-part program opened with the 1937 Sextet and closed with the bewitching 1925 “Music for the Theater.”

A rescoring of the 1933 Short Symphony, which was deemed at the time too difficult to play, the Sextet sounds like “Appalachian Spring” meets Billy Strayhorn’s “ ‘A’ Train.” It’s an appealing, intricate work that was played vividly by clarinetist David Howard, pianist Bryan Pezzone, violinists Camille Avellano and Akiko Tarumoto, violist Meredith Snow and cellist Brent Samuel.

“Music for the Theater” is more far-ranging, evoking in its five parts the weary and joyous life of itinerant musicians and performers, including striptease artists. It was played with great character by a 20-member ensemble led expertly by Miguel Harth-Bedoya.

Javier Alvarez’s “Linea 2,” receiving its U.S. premiere, also evokes both journeying and staying in place. Consisting of three movements written at different times over a 12-year period and each named after different stations of the Mexico City subway system, the engaging 20-minute work creates the excitement of travel and changing scenery through reiterated but varied rhythmic cells and melodic patterns.

It was played sensuously by violinists Elizabeth Baker and Kristine Hedwall, violist John Hayhurst and cellist David Garrett.