That was certainly the case for Sunday’s Discovery Ensemble performance at Sanders Theatre, led by the fast-rising Irish conductor Courtney Lewis, the group’s music director. The program opened with Britten’s “Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge,’’ a piece whose urbane musical wanderings demonstrate the young Britten’s wide command, and on this occasion, showcased the ensemble’s own range and virtuosity. Particularly appealing here was the Romance, delivered with a seductive rhythmic lilt, and the Aria Italiana, tossed off with bright frolicsome energy.
After the Britten’s diverse stylistic excursions, Lewis and company set off toward a weightier and more introverted quest, with Frank Martin’s powerful yet rarely performed settings of monologues from Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s “Jedermann,’’ itself an adaptation of the English morality play “Everyman.’’ The texts trace the path of a worldly self-assured man shocked by a visit from death, wrestling with his fate, and ultimately turning toward spiritual faith. Martin’s settings, from the 1940s, seem at once both carefully disciplined and wild, with a sturdy and mostly tonal musical language encountering a kind of surging, lawless expressionism.
On Sunday baritone soloist Christòpheren Nomura delivered a sensitively shaded, well-shaped and probing account of this challenging score. Lewis and the orchestra were with him every step of the way, but in fact needed to do still more. The orchestral playing too often edged toward the passively accompanimental when more intensity, presence, and bite were required. The piece’s strengths still translated but their impact could have been more forceful.
