Concerto sounds great on paper and in practice

Precious little imaginative, first-rate new music turns up for children these days, and now, thanks to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, there is one less such piece.

Tan Dun’s “Inventions for Paper Instruments and Orchestra,” commissioned by the Philharmonic for its first youth concert in Walt Disney Concert Hall last season, is now “Paper Concerto” and appropriated by adults.

The revised score was given its first performance Thursday night in an evening subscription program that also included Stravinsky’s “Song of the Nightingale” and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Vadim Repin was the fiery violin soloist; David Cossin, the entertainingly facile paper percussionist; Miguel Harth-Bedoya, the spirited, sympathetic conductor. Everything about the concert, which will be repeated tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and Sunday afternoon at Disney, was enjoyable.

And, hey, why not bring the family?

Not only is Repin a daredevil violinist and the Stravinsky terrific musical fireworks, Tan’s “Paper Concerto,” cleaned up of condescension, is now, ironically, better suited for all ages.

Tan uses all manner of paper percussion instruments for his soloist in front of the orchestra and also for the two orchestral percussionists in the rear. Three splendid-looking long scrolls suspended from the ceiling are hit by mallets and shaken to produce the sound of thunder. The percussionists blow on pages of magazines to create eerie whistling sounds. Cossin’s drum set is a pile of different-sized white cardboard boxes. The list of instruments also includes a cardboard tube drum (on which Cossin is a virtuoso), a paper umbrella and a Chinese folding paper fan.

At one point, Tan has the entire orchestra sharply, noisily turning pages in rhythm.

Originally, the composer treated the concerto as narrative about the invention of paper and sought to produce paper birdsong, paper storms and whatnot. At the premiere, video screens spoiled the look of the hall, distracting from the music, and the piece was introduced as naughty noisemaking. It was a bore, at least for the restless children in the audience.

Musically tightened, the now non-narrative concerto has become magical ceremony. The Chinese composer, who grew up in a Hunan village, is continually returning to his musical roots and his close connection to basic elements, to earth, water and humble paper. Tan never seems at a loss for new ways to make entrancing music from these materials (some years ago he wrote sexy paper music for an erotic dance, “The Pink”), and “Paper Concerto” makes a fine companion piece to his “Water Concerto.”

With a few violinists placed around Disney, the sound of luminous surround-sound strings, of captivating winds (they get the best tunes) and the general riot of paper, the concerto all but invites listeners to start fiddling with their programs. Disney has always seemed the most sensual of concert halls. Tan’s contribution is to make everything about the concert experience, even holding a program on your lap, part of the heightened sensations.

The progression from “Paper Concerto” to Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky was smart. “Song of the Nightingale,” a ballet score adapted from Stravinsky’s short opera “The Nightingale,” contains music written just after “The Rite of Spring,” with which Stravinsky made musical history by radicalizing Russian folk music.

“The Nightingale” is a Chinese folk tale, and so it is chinoiserie that gets the full-bore Stravinsky treatment. Harth-Bedoya emphasized its brilliant colors. During his six years as the Philharmonic’s associate conductor, he always got vibrant playing from the orchestra. Here, though, he not only showed a flair for the big, dramatic picture but demonstrated a new mastery of inner details as well.

It wasn’t until Stravinsky’s later, more conservative music that the Russian composer acknowledged his love for Tchaikovsky. In hindsight we can hear it even in his earlier, flamboyantly adventurous scores, such as “Song of the Nightingale.” Conversely, knowing Stravinsky we also approach Tchaikovsky differently.

Repin is the true modern Russian. There can be soul in his playing (as in his violent recent recording of the Tchaikovsky concerto with Valery Gergiev), and he has a fabulous technique. But he is not a particularly lyric player, his hard-edged phrasing sometimes verging on the nerve-racking.

With Harth-Bedoya as an accommodating accompanist, Repin played Tchaikovsky as modern music -- jerky, unpredictable, startling, amazing. Somehow his Stradivarius held up under the onslaught.

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Los Angeles Philharmonic

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall,

111 S. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 2 p.m. Sunday

Price: $15 to $125

Contact: (323) 850-2000 or www.laphil.com

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Also

Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: 8 tonight

Price: $25 to $79

Contact: (714) 556-2787 or www.ocpac.org