The centerpiece of the concerts was Monday's performance of "Layla and Majnun," the venerable Arabic tale of doomed love, adapted in 1908 into what has become the national opera of Azerbaijan by Uzeyir Hajibeyov. An original multiculturalist, Hajibeyov leavened conventional operatic structure with mugham, traditional semi-improvised Azerbaijani singing.
Ensemble violinist Jonathan Gandelsman distilled the opera into a six-part chamber cantata; his 11-player arrangement achieved both an opulent, profusely embroidered surface, matching the vocal ornamentation, and a raw drama. The singers, the legendary, phenomenal Alim Qasimov and his daughter, Fargana Qasimova, were similarly, startlingly immediate.
Both concerts also featured works composed for the group. On Sunday, Angel Lam's "Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain" layered atmospheric touches behind Kojiko Umezaki's breathy, undulating shakuhachi, but didn't escape a generic film-score mood. Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky's "Paths of Parables" found Umezaki as narrator, relating short Sufi tales. Behind him, Yanov-Yanovsky wove resourceful, modernist illustration, but took too long to get to the stories' punch lines.
On Monday, Gabriela Lena Frank's "Ritmos Anchinos" made a far-flung connection with Peruvian music; its cheerfully dissonant, asymmetrical foot-stomping didn't project a strong profile, but made ample use of Wu Man's charismatic flair on the pipa, strumming with self-possessed intensity. Evan Ziporyn's "Sulvasutra" had the most personality, with Sandeep Das's tabla emerging out of primordial, string-glissando chaos into a looping, sweeping landscape.
