Green Umbrella offers Stucky premiere

Denizens of Disney Hall had been scheduled to get a double dose of Steven Stucky this week. Monday night’s Green Umbrella concert featured one new Stucky work, and the Kansas-born composer’s Second Concerto for Orchestra is set to premiere Friday. But at the last minute, it was announced that Monday’s program needed to be altered (Steven Mackey’s “Ars moriendi” could not be performed due to an illness), which meant that yet another Stucky composition was added to the bill.

This additional opus, “Four Album Leaves,” is a somber, autumnal work. Its creepy, dissonant score provided a number of virtuoso runs for pianist Xak Bjerken, which the American soloist navigated expertly.

Also filling in for the Mackey were selections from Gyorgy Kurtag’s “Jatekok” series -- tiny slices of music that are like fleeting aural memories. Given segments with titles such as “Evocation of Petrushka” (which called to mind the sounds of a jewelry box), there is no disregarding the music’s sentimentality, but neither Kurtag nor Bjerken ever let them devolve into schmaltz.

Then it was time for the world premiere of Stucky’s “To Whom I Said Farewell,” a piece for voice and small orchestra set to the poetry of A.R. Ammons. The work plays as a sort of four-song cycle with an instrumental prelude and postscript. It begins with a single ping followed by extended string chords. These sounds set the stage for the dramatic entry of the female voice: The beginning of the poem “Consignee” burst with the power of a soliloquy from a Britten opera.

Sadly, this excitement faded quickly. Much of the rest of the piece, although interesting, was rather conventional. The exception was the music set to the short poem “Songlet,” the words of which describe a person looking honestly toward the prospect of death. The music is rightly somber, but there are brief passages that act as counterpoint to the brooding. A swell of Bruckneresque brass, for example, acted as an aside to the sorrow, suggesting that thoughts of death can inspire more than mere sadness. The vocal writing in “Songlet” was equally sensitive, and mezzo-soprano Janice Felty’s impassioned singing was linked with real emotion.

After intermission, Bjerken returned to perform a piano concerto written by Judith Weir. His playing again was fluid and clear; he give a light touch to the bubbly notes of the first movement and a lively (and appropriately vulgar) sense of fun to the long arpeggios and Scottish-style rhythms of the third movement.

The evening closed with Christopher Rouse’s “Compline.” A dense work for seven instruments, it meanders at times, but like much of Rouse’s music, it contains moments -- here, light cello brushes or spiky harp notes juxtaposed with rolling strings -- that sneak up on one’s ears and offer real delight.

In these last three pieces, Stucky’s conducting and the playing of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s New Music Group was stylish and precise. The dynamic achieved was particularly notable. Green Umbrella concerts have long provided the opportunity to listen to innovative music, but the acoustics (the intimacy) of Disney Hall truly allow these new works to be heard.