A wildly diverse festival of sound performances

MUSIC REVIEW

August 09, 2011|By Matthew Guerrieri, Globe Correspondent

Violinist Sarah Chang and assistant conductor Sean Newhouse performing… (hilary scott )

FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC Charles Wuorinen, director Tanglewood Music Center

At: Ozawa Hall/Theatre, Tanglewood, Friday-Sunday

LENOX - Appropriately, the most eclectic piece of the five-day Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood was at its diametric center. Errollyn Wallen’s two-piano, four-pianist “The Girl in My Alphabet’’ anchored Friday afternoon’s concert, morphing bits of “The Girl From Ipanema’’ into atonality, tonality, maximalism, minimalism, Romanticism - not to mention lounge jazz, salsa, David Foster soft-rock, and, finally, the original’s bossa nova, a dizzying spin of the dial.

This year’s festival, directed by the veteran modernist Charles Wuorinen, consummately performed by Tanglewood students and guests, wasn’t completely catholic. Wallen’s minimalist garnishes, for instance, were about as close as it got to that school. But as the weekend progressed (Jeremy Eichler’s review of the festival’s opening concerts appeared in late editions of Friday’s paper), the collection remained less ideological argument than variety show. The show even had a good theme song: Fred Ho’s brass-quartet “Fanfare to Stop the Creeping Meatball!,’’ a deliciously stiff cocktail of jazzy instigation, opened most of the festival concerts.

Friday offered further jazz influences, though more subsumed than Wallen’s. Lee Hyla’s “The House of Flowers’’ worked heavy comping over a dead-end bass line into a Pablo Neruda setting of intriguing mood, grimly enervated energy. Wayne Peterson’s “Transformations,’’ a chamber symphony given an opulent reading (under the sharp direction of Tanglewood Fellow Ken-David Masur), cruised in colorful contemporary-music fashion, but with the crisp rhythmic profile and polished instrumental choirs of a big band under the hood.

From Milton Babbitt, the festival’s lone late composer, came “No Longer Very Clear,’’ a short setting of John Ashbery; soprano Adrienne Pardee was a clear, vibrant medium for Babbitt’s cut-glass ambience. Pianist Ursula Oppens included Babbitt on her compact Sunday recital: “It Takes Twelve to Tango,’’ dodecaphonic wit given a concise, sensual workout. Alongside, Oppens programmed two of Babbitt’s students, in pieces that nevertheless contributed to the week’s heterogeneity: Jason Eckardt’s “Cuts,’’ an ambient blizzard of crushed chords, and Tobias Picker’s “Four Etudes for Ursula,’’ dogged, athletic neo-Romanticism.