Fun times, then on to weighty matters

ROGER Reynolds is a deep musical thinker, and his latest piece, “Illusion,” which the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group premiered Tuesday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, is deep musical thought -- a lot of it and on a lot of levels.

Like many such thinkers, Reynolds has turned to the wisdom of Greek tragedy to make sense of modern concerns. He has pulled apart plays by Euripides and Aeschylus to create a collage-like text that revolves around the murder of Agamemnon, the Mycenaean king who is one of the somewhat operatic work’s somewhat nebulous three characters, the other two being Iphigenia, the docile daughter he sacrifices to the gods, and Cassandra, the angry princess he wins in the Trojan War.

This is only somewhat operatic because it all seems very dreamlike, with the Greek chorus being computer-driven recorded voices circling over the audience’s heads. The characters are somewhat nebulous because they are musically and dramatically multifaceted, divided among actors, singers and instruments.

That there is a lot of musical thought in all this means that the performance lasted close to 70 minutes, and that’s not counting the “pre-cognitive” electronic music in the lobby beforehand or the presumably post-cognitive electronic exit music.

Nor does that take into consideration the time needed to mull over six dense columns of dense program notes that the composer provided and that clearly failed to entertain many in the audience who became disillusioned with “Illusion.” Despite an often terrific performance conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, listeners began leaving in alarming numbers after about 40 minutes.

It’s not easy to defend “Illusion,” given that it doesn’t seem to go anywhere dramatically despite an attempt to show that conflicts between public and private life are nothing new.

But it is not easy to discount the score either. Reynolds’ deep thinking -- as also revealed in his books, articles and teaching at UC San Diego -- includes the complex ways the mind receives and conceives of music. He is a pioneer in electronic and computer music and an all-around sonic visionary.

Nothing is simple in “Illusion.” Agamemnon’s facets were divided Tuesday among baritone (Troy Cook), solo cello (David Garrett) and actor (Tim Monsion). Iphigenia was actress (Melinda Page Hamilton) and clarinet (Lorin Levee). The shrill Cassandra was soprano (Hila Plitmann) and piccolo (Sarah Jackson). At first, the instrumental ids, as Reynolds refers to them, stick close to their vocal egos and superegos, but once the music gets messy, they develop lives of their own.

The instrumental writing can be compelling. A brass ensemble with percussion and piano is the basic background, and Reynolds gets it to sound both ancient and modern. The extravagant solo piccolo part, and Jackson’s brilliant playing of it, proved a show in themselves.

An effort at theater was made. The singers, actors and instrumental soloists moved to different perches onstage and on the terraces. Still, nothing seemed genuinely dramatic in “Illusion,” and after a while one felt afloat on a sea of blended poetry.

“Illusion” had one further obstacle Tuesday: It followed a more charismatic, if less substantial, piece by Unsuk Chin, a rapidly rising new music star. “Cantatrix Sopranica,” which was receiving its U.S. premiere, really is a musical illusion. One minute it is there and the next it is not.

A lover of wordplay, the South Korean composer has a playful attitude toward text. Her inspiration was the French neo-Dadaist Oulipo movement, resulting in just enough inspired literary nonsense for two sopranos (Plitmann and Caroline Stein) and a countertenor (Paul Flight), backed by a mixed ensemble, to whoop it up.

Fun, theatrical, colorful, “Cantatrix” can sound overly derivative of Luciano Berio. But eventually Chin goes beyond Berio in a delicious parody of Chinese music played on tinkling glasses and a final section in which the singers got more and more outrageous mimicking instruments. Alexander Mickelthwate conducted an expert performance.

The ultimate illusion may be that subjectless “Cantatrix” is actually closer to musical drama than the subject-laden “Illusion.” Chin’s new piece left little doubt that she has an opera in her. In fact, she’s written one, commissioned by Los Angeles Opera and intended for performance about now. It was canceled by bean counters and will instead have its premiere in Munich, Germany, next season.