by Thomas Healy

Boston MA, 13 November 2009.  The Boston Modern Orechestra Project, performing under the baton of its artistic director Gil Rose in Jordan Hall of the New England Conservatory of Music, devoted the evening to 20th century percussion music by Edgard Varèse, Lou Harrison, and George Antheil.  It’s good to hear the percussion section getting its due, and it’s only really possible in a contemporary music setting.  Though with Varèse's Ionisation (1931) and Antheil’s Ballet mécanique (1924), it’s hard to call the setting contemporary, but it’s just as well since they’re much stronger works than Harrison’s more recent La Koro Sutro (1973).

The Varèse was good; the orchestra played it well, and all the pieces were there.  And in a hall like Jordan, the percussion sounds pierced through to the bones.  After this 1st piece, I was a happy camper; I heard exactly what I had expected to hear.  This work is a great, solid modern gem that never fails to please.  But the consequential fear was that Ionisation was going to be treated as a prelude to the main act.  In a way, this is unavoidable, since it’s such a short piece, and Harrison’s work was closer to 30 minutes or so in length.  I expected the main act to be worthy to justify the fleeting presence of the Varèse.

So, I accepted that the Varèse was the runner-up, but to my misfortune and displeasure someone came out to speak about the Harrison piece while the stage was being prepared.  Andrew Clark, artistic director of the Providence Singers, told us about the piece, his choir, and the clever instruments constructed by the composer that made up his “American gamelan”.  Rolls of information that strike at the surface of the evening’s entertainment are told to a grateful crowd, but essentially this has nothing to do with the music itself, only the many distracting stories surrounding the work.  My objection, because I haven't really stated it yet, is the uselessness of these verbal preambles to the work, or rather, the pressure it puts on the work to justify such a necessity for words and narration.  I have come to feel that it’s always tricky to juggle the music with the talking about the music; in this case, it was done poorly and artlessly.

The singers are competent and seemed to enjoy the piece, though they are not so spectacular as to inspire a letter home.  Maybe it’s the music that causes this reaction?  At first I was interested and impressed by the composition.  There seemed to be a steadiness and a freshness to the sounds.  But somewhere along the line, this freshness began to fade.  Each new section operated similarly to the previous one, only not quite as well and with less mystique.  Sadly, everything became too familiar; soon the text became the master that operated with musical punctuation and visual aids.  The endings became lazy: the text is over so the music must end as well, why?  And these bizarre foreign percussion instruments, they look impressive and quite interesting but they really don’t sound interesting.  For all their visual appeal, they do not measure up where it counts: they aren’t that original, at least as far as the sounds they produce.

I was intrigued and enjoyed the first 8 minutes of it, but beginnings are easy because the freshness is at its most virile, and it doesn’t take a very creative mind to invoke that.  Almost every piece is intriguing for the first 30 seconds, but weaker works begin to fall apart with time if there is a lack of re-invention.  The sounds begin to drop off listlessly and the progression and story line lose their novelty.  BMOP along with the Providence Singers gave it their best, and I applaud them for that, but this work does not belong in the wake of Ionisation.  Some concerts seem to get mixed up somewhere along the line.  Edgard Varèse posed as a pawn, but is really a king, while Lou Harisson is really a pawn, but posed as a queen.  Ionisation said so much more musically than La Koro Sutro in about a fifth of the time. Varèse was a great composer, and in a concert like this we can easily see why.

I can’t avoid the contradiction that a preamble, a shorter one, before the Antheil piece created, which I thought quite apt.  All in all there were a lot more real things to say about Antheil’s work, as it involved mechanical player pianos and various MIDI operations (very complicated stuff that I only superficially understand).  I’ll admit I’m at a loss for words to describe the Ballet mécanique (this is not a cop-out).  Nor would I allow them if they cropped up in the sneaky way that they do to corrupt such a graceful experience.  Just go hear the Ballet mécanique as soon as humanly possible. It’s brilliant!