Composers have always written music about other music. The more than 1000-year tradition has given rise to all kinds of experiments drawn from whatever those who put pen to paper had heard previously. Building upon that corpus, Esa-Pekka Salonen argues, places new creators squarely into a conversation with history, which remains a vital source for rich ideas.
The composers represented on the second program of the Festival of Contemporary Music all sought to do justice to their historical source material, at times with reverence, at others through bawdy humor. Works by Nico Muhly, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Salonen himself, heard Friday night at Ozawa Hall, ranged from the tenderly reflective to outright witty. Performed by fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center Friday afternoon at Ozawa Hall, the pieces suggest that an age-old tradition is alive, well, and more than a little feisty.
Muhly grew up absorbing the sounds of the English Renaissance. That’s probably why his Two Motets of William Byrd felt so much like a loving embrace of the past. Scored for chamber ensemble, the piece treats Byrd’s “Miserere mei, Deus” and “Bow thine ear, O Lord” to a kind of modern consort. They may feel like arrangements on the surface. But listen closely: the orchestration projects deep resonance and warmth even in the sparse passages. Woodwinds and strings cast Byrd’s counterpoint in varying shades of light, revealing every dimension of the supple melodic shapes. The ensemble performed with sensitivity as conductor Artürs Oskars Mitrevics carefully shaped each phrase.
Davies’s Fantasia and Two Pavans, in Salonen’s words, “takes the piss out of Henry Purcell.” These short ditties for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, harpsichord, and percussion thumb their noses at the very source. But they’re respectful jibes. Tastefully placed “wrong notes” provide just enough force to knock the melodies and harmonies off center. Lines continuously run in and out of focus while retaining Purcell’s playful charm. Jessica Yuma’s pianola-like figures, delightfully out of tune, recast the Partita No. 1 into a bar-room jamboree. Strings answered with bluesy swagger. Drummer Liam McManus’s swing rhythms generated a few laughs. So did the Partita No. 2, which wound down like a phonograph losing its tension. Here, too, conductor Mitrevics’s smooth control left plenty of room for expressive freedom to emerge.
The musicians made Salonen’s Fog just as compelling. This work for chamber ensemble muses upon the Prelude from Bach’s Partita in E major for solo violin. But there’s a personal twist: Salonen composed the score for the 90th birthday of Frank Gehry, designer of Walt Disney Hall. And while this music keeps the tongue firmly in cheek, the music wrestles with legacy. Bach’s familiar arpeggios crop up here and there. But they never completely overtake the dense harmonies and sonorous textures Salonen builds around them. “Bach cannot be destroyed,” Salonen said of his effort. “In the contest between us, Bach wins.”
Yet Salonen paints a stunning picture of that tension along the way. Lines bubble up through the winds before spreading out to the strings. Piano figures halt the action momentarily before the ensemble dives headlong into an all-out jam session. The tranquil ending brings Bach’s theme once again to the surface: it is slow and assured but changed from the experience.
The performers made the music bounce gleefully. Violinist Matthew Cone sensitively dispatched Bach’s Prelude from the second balcony. The ensemble, led by Julian Gilewski, picked up where he left off, playing with rousing conviction.
The concert’s opener, Salonen’s Saltat sobrius: Fantasy upon Sederunt principes, conveyed similar vitality. A riff on the familiar organum, Salonen’s score keeps Perotin’s rhythms alive through a string orchestra’s added layers of texture and color. Basses sound out the chants high in their range, the lines channeling serenity without soaring. String figures answer with bouncy pizzicatos that quickly turn into bowed fury. From time to time, the figures give off harmonic whiffs, like steam from a boiling pot. Conductor Lauren Smith led it all with fierce commitment.
In an age when classical music institutions are fraying under all kinds of pressures, Salonen feels the program shines a ray of hope. “Institutions rise and fall. But people will continue to make music as they always have,” he said. And that’s a comforting thought.