BMOP soars through graceful season finale

By T.J. Medrek, The Boston Herald, Sunday, May 23, 2004

A dazzling world premiere by Evan Ziporyn and the appearance of not one but two celebrated guest soloists distinguished the final concert of this year's Boston Modern Orchestra Project season at Jordan Hall on Friday.

Renowned "new music'' pianist Ursula Oppens applied her unfailingly insightful curiosity and sublime graciousness of touch to Augusta Read Thomas' 2000 intermittently appealing "Aurora.'' And master clarinetist Richard Stoltzman's playing impressed as usual in Stephen Hartke's 2001 Clarinet Concerto (also known as "Landscapes with Blues'') - even if the work itself proved overlong and predictable.

Ziporyn's brand-new "War Chant,'' though, was a gripping experience from start to finish. The MIT music professor, who "moonlights'' as a clarinetist and member of the New York City-based Bang on a Can All-Stars new music ensemble, used the sounds we all hear inside an airplane cabin as inspiration for this ominous soundscape.

In broad design, it's a short (15 minute-ish) trip into the air and back to the ground. So at first, it's easy to smile at the uncanny cleverness of Ziporyn's use of strings to imply, if not exactly imitate, the sounds of a plane's engines revving up. But that sound swiftly become a metaphor for many of the feelings flying stirs up these days: a heady exhilaration, a dash of discomfort and a kind of primal terror. We may think of air travel as an ordinary human activity, even post 9/11. But "War Chant'' reminded me how unnaturally bizarre human flight really is - and how beautiful.

In addition, BMOP Music Director Gil Rose - who in less than a decade here has become one of the most important musicians in this city - led his marvelous orchestra in two earlier works: Elena Ruehr's luminous 1989 "Sky Above Clouds'' and David Rakowski's powerful 1997 "Persistent Memory.''
     
( Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose, at Jordan Hall, Friday.)