Nyman Showcase Suffers From a Lack of Editing

With a zest for work that might daunt even Philip Glass, Michael Nyman has carved out quite a voluminous niche in the British contemporary music scene. Indeed, the similarities to Glass are striking. Like Glass, Nyman has a distinctive populist style rooted in Minimalism, and a personalized, amplified eponymous ensemble. Like Glass, he takes on everything--operas, ballets, chamber music, symphonic music, world music, film scores. And like Glass, alas, he seems to take on too much, diluting his inspiration cranking out piece after piece.

Hence the numbing sense of sameness that overtook the Michael Nyman Band’s film-music concert at Royce Hall on Friday, the last in a series of Nyman events that marked his belated Los Angeles debut last week. Interestingly, the dance music that Nyman and his string quartet played Thursday as part of the Stephen Petronio Company’s “Strange Attractors” was far more substantial and moving, full of good, mournful musical ideas. But his vast film output--31 scores as of 2000--varies wildly in quality.

The selections surveyed music from the Purcell-derived “The Draughtsman’s Contract” (1982) through “The Claim” (2000), with stops at some popular scores like “The Piano”--heard in a Nyman solo piano set--and, as an encore, “Carrington.” “Band” is an apt description for the 13-piece Nyman ensemble, for it often sounds like a street band--deliberately rough, brash, blaring--and you can still hear its origins as an early-music group in its more raucous moments. It was capable of lyrical tenderness in the pretty tunes from “Wonderland,” but most of the time, the players energetically hammered out the repetitive motives, with the trudging “Memorial” reaching a low point of banality.

No titles were announced from the stage and none were listed in the program, a bizarre twist that only added to the impression that much of Nyman’s film music plays like one long, interminable composition.