For the only orchestral entry in its week-long festival “Jumpin’ Into the Future” (see BMInt’s previews HERE and HERE) celebrating of the centenary of multi-genre composer, conductor, hornist, writer, teacher and former New England Conservatory President Gunther Schuller (1925-2015), the NEC Symphony under David Loebel devoted half a program on Wednesday to Schuller and composers whom Schuller championed.

First and, we will argue foremost, among the latter category was Schuller’s predecessor as NEC president (then called Director) George Whitefield Chadwick (1854-1931), who led the conservatory from 1897-1930 after teaching there from 1882. We maintain that he was the greatest composer ever affiliated with the school, NECS performed the Jubilee movement of his Symphonic Sketches (1896-1904. As we have said before, the Sketches as a whole (there are four of them, effectively constituting Chadwick’s fourth symphony) comprise a masterpiece that should be performed as a whole, which we can’t remember NEC having done yet. That said, Loebel led the technically superb NECS in a rousing, if somewhat stolidly foursquare, rendition.

One of proudest successes in Schuller’s efforts as musical advocate and promoter was his taking up the cause of Scott Joplin (1868-1917), shortly after jazz pianist Knocky Parker in 1970 and classical pianist and musicologist Joshua Rifkin in 1971 issued recordings of Joplin’s piano music. Schuller arranged several Joplin rags for ensemble, creating the NEC Ragtime Ensemble in the process, and their Grammy-winning recording was the biggest hit the Nonesuch label ever had. In 1975 the Houston Grand Opera asked Schuller to orchestrate the music from Joplin’s only surviving opera, Treemonisha (full score lost, piano-vocal score published 1911) for what they thought was the premiere performance (actually, the real premiere took place in 1913 under Joplin, and the first modern performance was in 1972 in Atlanta under Robert Shaw, with orchestration by another Boston luminary, T. J. Anderson, but it apparently was not well promoted). Loebel and the NECS gave the audience the overture (you can hear Schuller conducting it with the HGO HERE, and for contrast listen to it in the 2003 reduced orchestration by Rick Benjamin that he claims is closer to Joplin’s original, HERE), which well pointed up the genius and infectiousness of Joplin’s saucy syncopations; by way of synecdoche, the overture reveals Tremonisha as a sui generis example that integrated ragtime and similar vernacular styles into the format of European grand opera. Once again, when Loebel allowed the music to break loose from any Edwardian constriction, the results were delicious.

Now, for Schuller himself. We never asked him, but one wonders what composers think when their most popular and performed works, such as Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee (1959), come from early in their careers. Bemused? Irritated? Happy for the royalties, surely. Fortunately, the style of Seven Studies is not so far from the ideas Schuller pursued later on; in fact, in this 2009 interview with BMInt he proudly proclaimed that his style had never changed a bit. And, as dedicated dodecaphonist, he only ever used a single row (rather like writing every piece in C major). Needless to say, the wide variety of moods and colors he produced within these severe constraints testified to the breadth of his imagination.

Seven Studies, Schuller’s Pictures at an Exhibition, riffs on the works of Paul Klee (flanking the text), but without a narrative connector apart from the unity supplied by the row. Mostly dark sonorities and blocky textures, with some vaguely modal hints in the melody, address Antique Harmony; Abstract Trio creates shifting concertinos of, you guessed it, three instruments, in perky little passages—at the risk of redundant repetition, all these performances by the NECS players were superb in attack, intonation and crispness. Schuller’s jazz chops were exhibited both in the writing and playing in the bluesy Little Blue Devil, and The Xing Twittering Machine did natter on. The longest and most depictive movement, “Arab Village,” had us scanning the stage to locate the zither that Schuller had stunningly created using harp, oboe and viola—genius. An Eerie Moment was not only unheimlich, as its German name had it, but also fully schrecklich like a proper horror movie—was Bernard Herrmann listening two years before Psycho? It’s hard to detect anything conventionally pastoral in the concluding “Pastorale,” but maybe you can find hints we couldn’t. Loebel effectively marshaled the very large orchestral forces and offered the many soloists well-deserved callouts and kudos.

For the second half, Loebel yielded the podium to NEC Graduate Diploma Candidate Clancy Ellis (though at his height, its platform seemed superfluous). Ellis, an alumnus of Mannes and Eastman and now studying with Hugh Wolff and Stefan Asbury, has already been an assistant to JoAnn Falletta in Buffalo and conducted orchestras in the US and abroad. He and NECS essayed familiar works chronologically close yet in divergent styles, namely Johann Strauss Jr.’s overture to Die Fledermaus and Stravinsky’s suite from The Firebird. We are reliably informed that the Strauss is a particularly difficult number to perform, notwithstanding its deceptive ease and grace; not a whit of stress was apparent in the orchestra’s lithe, brisk and crisp rendition. Ellis elicited supple phrasing, dynamics and tempi.

We surmise from the listing of movements that NECS was using Stravinsky’s 1919 revised score rather than either the 1911 original or the 1945 revision. What we said about the Strauss applies equally, if not more so, to the large ensemble of the Stravinsky, and while the playing sometimes got a little rough in the “Infernal Dance of King Kashchei” it was otherwise impeccable and didn’t break the spell. We note particularly the lovely bassoon solo of (going by the program listing) Keer Zhou in the “Berceuse.” We’ll be following Ellis’s career with great interest.

The NEC “Schullerfest” continues until November 22^nd, with its final production a recital by saxophonist Ken Radnofsky in Schuller’s Sax Sonata on Saturday. Details HERE.

Vance R. Koven studied music at Queens College and New England Conservatory, and law at Harvard. A composer and practicing attorney, he was for many years the chairman of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble.