Scotsman MacMillan’s soliloquies stand apart

Parthenogenesis is what happens when conception occurs without a sexual act. It’s a mouthful of a word, and also the title of an occasionally baffling, always ear-tingling, 51-minute dramatic “scene” by the hugely gifted Scotsman James MacMillan, who fronted the Philharmonic New Music Group at Zipper Hall on Monday night.

“Parthenogenesis” is really a series of non-interacting soliloquies from three characters: Kristel, a woman who was hurt in a World War II bombing and nine months later gave birth; Anna, the bitter, derisive, grown-up issue of this virgin birth; and Bruno, an angel with ambiguous motives.

Anna’s monologues (spoken by Tara Platt) were accompanied by a rumbling, grumbling electronic tape that suggested slowed-down sounds of war. Underneath the singing parts of Kristel (soprano Elizabeth Keusch) and Bruno (baritone Troy Cook), MacMillan unleashed a typically dazzling series of orchestrations.

MacMillan turns on the flash with hit-and-run skill, yet there are also passages, particularly those for piano and harp, that approach the intimate depth of Benjamin Britten. Even when the mind drifts away from the characters’ inward thoughts, MacMillan’s timbral imagination and clear sense of organization keep you going.

Completing the all-Brit agenda, MacMillan also led Judith Weir’s “Thread!” -- an all-too-literally illustrated narrative account of the Norman invasion of England in 1066 -- and Thomas Ades galumphing orchestration of “Cardiac Arrest,” an album track by the ska-pop band Madness.