A riveting ‘Aura’ of Cambodia about it

Southwest Chamber Music proudly turns 20 next year. It champions new music and local music avidly and intelligently. It reaches out to its community, notably in its meaningful education programs. And honors accrue. The ensemble boasts Grammys for the first two volumes of its worthwhile series of Mexican composer Carlos Chavez’s neglected chamber music. Volume 3 has been nominated for two more, including best classical recording. We’ll know the winner Wednesday.

But Southwest Chamber Music received a rather bigger and more lasting prize Saturday night at the Norton Simon Museum. For this, the last of its Composer Portrait series concerts -- this year devoted to Chinary Ung -- it commissioned a major new work. “Aura” lasted 36 riveting minutes and will expand to 40 in a version being prepared for the fall. Why not make it 50 or 60 minutes? With music this enthralling, there is no need to hold back.

Ung is a pioneer. Born in Cambodia in 1942, he left his war-torn country in 1964 to study clarinet (the only instrument available to him in Phnom Penh) in New York. Teaching at Northern Illinois University, Connecticut College, the University of Pennsylvania and Arizona State University, he spent many years completely cut off from Cambodia. News of the slaughter and starvation of several in his family was slow to reach him.

Until recently, Ung refused to return to his homeland, maintaining his connection with Cambodian culture through his work. It is no longer uncommon that East meets West in music, and Ung was hardly the first Asian or Western composer to make the connections.

Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison came first (as, for that matter, did Debussy). Toru Takemitsu was on the case from Japan, Ravi Shankar from India. In the 1950s, the late Nam June Paik found that when he mixed his native Korean music with Schoenberg, he got an explosive reaction that led to topless cello concerts and video art.

But Ung -- who has been at UC San Diego since 1995 and who won the Grawemeyer Award, composition’s most prestigious prize, for his orchestral piece “Inner Voices” in 1989 -- worked with more exotic material than most. Unlike the gamelan music of Indonesia or the gagaku of imperial Japan, Cambodian music has had little international exposure.

Even now, most of us know it through Ung’s filter. In his sleight of hand, Western instruments become Eastern while never losing their personalities. It’s the smoothness of the style, I think, that first draws one in. Ung explains Khmer culture, in which the gongs and drums and the wailing winds insinuate themselves into life, using our language. But he has also held back, realizing we may not be ready for the raw, ecstatic deal.

In “Aura” -- which is written for two sopranos and a 10-member ensemble of woodwinds, strings and percussion -- Ung has gotten past the longing for his own past. Expression is now direct and open. He will never lose sensual beauty (all his music is gorgeous), but there is more. In one section, titled “Rain of Tears,” he expresses the universal sorrow of awe-inspiring floods, whether New Orleans or Banda Aceh, through chilling, clotted string melodies and the eerie whistling of the singers.

Awe, though, is awe, and that is the higher aspiration of “Aura.” The sopranos sing choppy text in many languages, but the Cambodian term for the Buddha’s aura, chaw pean raingsei, is the one that stands out. Musically, the piece unfolds like radiating light. As the aura is unveiled, the singers bow finger cymbals, the percussionist bows a vibraphone, the strings play piercing high harmonics, everyone who can whistles, and all is aglow.

A dazzling high soprano part was elatedly sung by Elissa Johnston. Kathleen Roland contrasted with a darker soprano. Southwest’s artistic director, Jeff von der Schmidt, conducted with conviction, but it will take time for the ensemble to sound more comfortable with this music’s demands.

Performances in the first half of the program, which looked at some East-West musical history through enticing short works by Debussy, Ravel, John Cage, Lou Harrison and Chou Wen-chung, were also often uncertain. The evening began badly when pianist Ming Tsu rushed through Cage’s Satiesque “In a Landscape” as if it were bad Debussy. But the first half ended well when Johnston sang three Ravel songs (to Mallarme poems) with sensitivity and ingratiating sensibility.

The concert will be repeated at the Colburn School tonight instead of Tuesday, as had been planned originally, because of the Grammys. Heaven forbid music should be on the agenda. No matter. “Aura” is a winner.

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Southwest Chamber Music

Where: Zipper Hall, Colburn School of Performing Arts, 200 S. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 8 tonight

Price: $28

Contact: (800) 726-7147 or www.swmusic.org