Last night, I was swayed by this week's NY Phil program of 20th Century French works to make my first appearance of the season at The Barn (a.k.a. Avery Fisher Hall). It generally lived up to expectations, save for a brief, dumb detour.
Tristan Murail (b.1947) who's run Columbia University's composition program since 1997, was given his long-overdue Philharmonic debut with a performance of Gondwana (1980), which also marked the first U.S. performance of that influential work. Murail is the leading proponent of "spectral music," which seeks to build a coherent sound system through the acoustical properties of sound itself, using computers and other diagnostic tools to develop complex harmonics and rhythms (as opposed to serial music, which works from rigid mathematical sequences.)
Gondwana is named after the prehistoric supercontinent that split 180 million years ago into Africa, South America and Australia. The work, which calls for a huge orchestra, is meant to convey the sound of that tectonic shift. To me, it sounded like an unholy clamor, with each section playing dozens of individual lines that eschewed any obvious sense of harmony. When the youthful Murail came out for his curtain call in jeans and a t-shirt, he was greeted with applause that was, at best, polite. I guess that's saying something for a piece that's almost 30 years old.
Murail studied with Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory in the late 60's, so it was only fitting, in this centenary season, that the program also included Messiaen's Oiseaux Exotiques (1956), a dense and complex piece that marked Messiaen's first extended exploration of birdsong. Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen played the solo part with flair and drama, though it was strange to see him relying on a score throughout. The slimmed-down orchestra of winds and percussion was led by clarinetist Stanley Drucker – who, at 80, is still kicking ass in his final year with the Philharmonic.
And Messiaen revered Debussy's music, so it made sense to close the concert with La Mer, which, for all it's popular appeal, employs some pretty daring impressionistic harmonies. La Mer is as close to perfection as orchestral music gets, and the Phil pulled it off with grace and ease.
But, what the hell was conductor Ludovic Morlot – a Frenchman making his NY Phil subscription debut – thinking by throwing an early Mozart piano concerto on the program, right after the Murail? In the program, Morlot claimed he included it "for contrast," which sounds to me like a weak cover for some idiot manager or board member demanding something more "crowd pleasing." Oh well, at least it gave me some time to read up on spectral music…