Music of the Other Place

Of the many things I'm taking away from my current Bach orgy is that I'm very happy I didn't live in the Baroque era. I obviously like Baroque music and that of Bach enough to even attempt the exercise. However, it makes me appreciate the time we live in, where we can listen to music written 2700 years ago or this year. More than that, we're not just restricted to what is happening locally; we can explore music from all over the world.

An excellent example of this smaller world was on display at Jordan Hall on Friday night, as the Boston Modern Orchestra Project performed "Concertos for Indigenous Instruments." The instruments in question covered different parts of Asia, including Korean barrel drums, a Japanese zither, a Persian flute, and Chinese percussion.

The program included two premiers. Jin Hi Kim's "Eternal Rock II," for Korean Barrel Drum Set and Orchestra was the better of the two. The stage had a novel set-up for a concerto, as Gerry Hemingway stood on a platform in the back of the stage. The instrument traditionally belongs in temples rather than the concert hall, giving the piece a ceremonial quality. Two percussionists standing in the front corners of the stage acted like priests, telling the orchestra when to begin and end.

For the most part, the concerto alternated between orchestral passages and solos on the barrel drums, with a little overlap. Kim used a variety of rhythmic technique, as each section had a different meter than the previous. (To great effect, an early cadenza in 5 was resolved to a tutti in 4, the way cadenzas would typically hover on the dominant.) Kim also utilizes polyrhythms and hemiolas to develop the unpitched instrument.

Korean music doesn't have the same sense of pitch that Western music's equal tempered scale uses. To fulfill a Buddhist ideal known as "living tones," Kim uses vibrato, slides, glassandi, and special articulation. Reza Vali had a similar challenge for his concerto, a wooden flute. In the Persian scale, notes can have slightly different pitches depending on their function. Vali used these almost unisons to great effect, including a long melody for what sound like out of tune woodwinds.

Vali's concerto for the ney, a Persian flute, was titled "Toward that Endless Plain." It was strongest during the movements that allowed the ney to show off its breathy tone. The long lines, modeled on improvisation, were expertly played by Khosro Soltani. The orchestra created an intricate sound carpet for the soloist. Most of the piece came across like an oversized chamber work. The notable exceptions were the prelude and interlude, known as "The Abyss." These two sections were the weakest part of the concerto. (I didn't like it when Stravinsky called it "The Rite of Spring.")

Two older works were also on the program. The concert concluded with Yi°, the first movement of a cycle of concerti based on the I Ching (易经). The most famous piece based on that work, of course, is John Cage's Music of Changes. Tan's work features similarly fragmented melodies. It wasn't much of a concerto, though. It's a shame they weren't able to present "The Map," with its rich use of Miao folk music, though it's very understandable.

The other piece on the program stood out. Even though it was written for the koto, a Japanese zither with movable bridges, it was written by American Henry Cowell. This was a far cry from his earlier avant garde music. It featured a short conjunct melody harmonized in very different ways, starting with very simple, consonant harmonizations. As the piece continued, dissonance appeared and disappeared (including some very crunchy parallel half-steps). Masayo Ishigure played the solos.

Overall, it was a very strong performance by the BMOP, with a great program. Their final Jordan Hall performance, "Big Band," features music of Gershwin, Babbitt, and Bernstein, along with a commission by William Thomas McKinley.