From Schubert to John Adams, in three days

In the great battle between the apostles of Old Music and New Music raging in these pages, Peter Burwasser and I seem to be the champions of a mixed diet. He has presented a moral argument for listening to new compositions, but my own preference for temporal miscegenation rests on a less lofty foundation. I enjoy both kinds of concerts.

Wednesday night at the Perelman, I heard an ensemble from the legendary Marlboro Music Festival play string quintets by Boccherini (1743-1805) and Schubert (1797-1828). On Sunday afternoon, in the same hall, a leading contemporary composer, John Adams (born 1947), led 44 young musicians through a program that hammered the walls with compositions by Adams and a modern Dutch composer, Louis Andriessen (born 1939).

Both concerts were presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society— an organization that regularly presents established chamber ensembles playing established classics. Here was a good example of the range and liveliness of the experiences hidden under those staid terms "classical music" and "chamber music."

Anticipating the familiar

The Schubert quintet followed the intermission at the Wednesday night concert, and you could feel the anticipation as the listeners settled into their seats, knowing they were going to hear something they remembered and treasured. And why not? We're always told we can hear great works many times and gain something every time. Why should we object when people take advantage of that opportunity?

The Boccherini and the Schubert were both composed for grownups— a fact we should keep in mind when doomsayers point to all the gray heads in today's chamber music audiences. The Boccherini is a civilized entertainment created for a society that valued graceful pleasures, and the Schubert includes passages that can best be appreciated by mature minds willing to stand on the edge of eternity and contemplate its mysteries.

Echoes of West Side Story

The opener at the second concert, John Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony, actually has a lot in common with the Boccherini. It's clearly intended as pleasure music. It even adheres to the standard fast-slow-fast pattern of the Baroque concerto and features solos by different sections of the orchestra in the same way the Baroque concerto grosso pits a small ensemble against a larger mass.

Adams builds his scores on a foundation pulse, and the pulse threatened to overwhelm everything else in the first minutes of the first movement. I began to wonder if we were going to spend the whole piece listening to that relentless beat. Then Adams switched to something with a jazzy, West Side Story feel and launched into a parade of musical variety that included violin solos and duets, squeaky piccolo passages, and moments that spotlighted most of the other instruments on the stage.

Adams's second movement begins with a lonely flute floating over a murmuring orchestra and turns into a long, beautiful adagio. The third movement brings Son of to a traditional rousing climax.

Plato set to music

The title of Andriessen's De Staat means The Republic, and it refers to Plato's longest dialogue. The score includes four altos who punctuate the instrumental music with brief quotes from Plato.

The program notes failed to include translations of the texts, but I soon decided that wasn't necessary. If you've read The Republic, you don't need specific texts to listen to De Staat. You just need to know the general drift of the work the music is commenting on.

De Staat provoked many thoughts— too many for a review. I'll just note that Plato's republic is a fascist state by our standards, and De Staat is the product of a culture that actually experienced fascism. Someone else would have reacted differently. The important thing is that Andriessen's creation provokes thought. It's also fascinating musically: a big, shimmering wall of sound.

We live in a time when most of our fellow citizens have grown up listening to loud music with a big beat. De Staat and Son of Chamber Symphony both satisfy the lust for volume, and the Adams piece has a pronounced beat, too. I wouldn't want to spend my life listening to that kind of music— and most new music doesn't fit that description, thank Heaven— but a little now and then has its charms.

Stravinsky's joke?

Both concerts rounded out the program with works by Stravinsky. The Musicians From Marlboro played three miniature charmers that Stravinsky concealed behind an innocuous title, Three Pieces for String Quartet.

Ensemble ACJW (the performance arm of the Academy, a program jointly run by Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School and Weill Music Institute, hence those initials) presented Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Winds, with Jeremy Denk doing his usual fine job as soloist.

Stravinsky famously argued that music is just a pattern of sounds and can't express anything. His Concerto seems to contradict that idea by including some of the most expressive music anybody ever wrote. But the emotions bounce around at random, with no obvious logic. Solemn passages precede sudden romps, tenderness is followed by something completely different.

Was Stravinsky pulling our legs? I have no idea. I just know it was a great piece to listen to.♦


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