REVIEWS | A look at the weekend's classical concerts: Shock of the old

Kansas City Star

February 04, 2007

What makes a piece of music last?

Three concerts this weekend -- with music ranging from an 1822 Rossini overture to a piece completed last month -- left me pondering the nature of old and new. Why do some works remain timeless while others seem to have a shelf life and then grow stale?

One way that music remains fresh is by attracting good performances. The pinnacle of the weekend's music-making was Finnish pianist Paavali Jumppanen's magnificent rendering of BartA3k's Third Piano Concerto on Sunday with conductor AndrA s Ligeti and the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra.

The Carlsen Center's Yardley Hall was an ideal venue for this orchestra, whose crystalline clarity of sound was something amazing to hear. Jumppanen's approach to BartA3k's gentle masterpiece from 1945 was more architectonic than coloristic, but its precision and drive -- and the shimmering detail of the orchestral texture -- made for unalloyed pleasure.

When it comes to the central classical repertoire, central Europeans often just get it in ways that Americans often do not. From the first bars of Rossini's 'Semiramide' Overture on Sunday you could hear the difference -- in the inexorable drive to each phrase's climax, or the little hesitations that made you sit up. It made the piece sound as fresh as if it were new.

Not so in Friday's performance by the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory Orchestra of John Corigliano's Symphony No. 1, a piece that sounds dated already, less than 20 years after its inception.

Conductor Robert Olson made sure there was plenty of fiber to the orchestral sound, despite White Recital Hall's ungrateful acoustics. But nothing could prevent Corigliano's piece from descending into bombast. Written in the late 1980s in memory of the composer's friends who had suffered or died from AIDS, this unsubtle piece has not aged well.

That's not to say that there aren't affecting moments, like the sweet interpolations of an Isaac AlbA©niz tango into the first movement or the melancholy cello solos of the finale. But rage doesn't come easily to orchestral music, and Corigliano's crashing, repetitive passages are more akin to adolescent wall-banging than to an adult response to grief.

Fortunately the conservatory musicians were wholly in their element in Strauss' 100-year-old tone poem 'Death and Transfiguration,' which formed the second half of the concert. So was Olson, who led the gigantic score with consummate flexibility, pacing and panache. Here again it was the 'old' music that sounded new.

Things were a bit different at NewEar's concert Saturday at Unity Temple, where the most interesting work was the newest -- a world premiere by UMKC Conservatory composer Paul Rudy .

It takes courage and audacity, perhaps, to write a piece about 'finding equilibrium,' in Rudy's words, 'between the wildness of a mechanized culture and a calm that comes from discovering peace inside one's own spiritual place.'

But 'Vastly Shrinking Space' finds a potent middle ground by juxtaposing recorded sounds ranging from birds to trucks with vigorously scored, often lyrical cello passages.

Saturday's guest artist, cellist Madeleine Shapiro, drew on a fistful of special effects, from glassy harmonics to weirdly manipulated glissandi. Rudy's recorded track consisted partly of prerecorded Shapiro, sounding in counterpoint with the live performers.

It is a work of real substance. One felt a real sense of struggle between the pleading cries of the cello and the monstrous machine-like churning. At one point a mechanized roar threatened to take over the cello entirely, until a bird-like sputtering signaled new hope and a coda of tender harmonics.

The rest of the program was a mixed stew but offered rewards. Most intriguing was 'Anusorn' by Thai native Narong Prangcharoen, a doctoral student at UMKC, scored for cello and piano. Written in memory of the multitude who died in the 2004 tsunami, it avoided gigantic gestures in favor of gently disquieting wave sounds and plaintive, human-sounding wails from Shapiro's cello.

Tale of three concerts

Friday: UMKC Conservatory Orchestra with conductor Robert Olson, White Recital Hall

Saturday: NewEar with cellist Madeleine Shapiro, Unity Temple on the Plaza

Sunday: Hungarian Symphony Orchestra with pianist Paavali Jumppanen, Carlsen Center

For full reviews of Friday's and Saturday's concerts and of Sunday's performance of Collage Dance Collective, go to kansascity.com and click on Entertainment.

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