Barber, Bernstein And Other Heroes Of U.S. History

Isn’t it odd how Lincoln Center’s constituent musical organizations present programs that should be the norm for 21st-century ensembles, but try to make them seem special or unusual by giving them names or calling them festivals? The New York Philharmonic has long done this with its Composer Focus programs, which rarely amount to more than a few of a contemporary composer’s works spread through a season. Behold the triumph of marketing as a substitute for creative programming.

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center has put its marketing muscle at the service of its Winter Festival, thematic programs that typically have both major works and padding: music that has been neglected for good reason but can squeak through as a curiosity in a festival setting. Maybe the padding is the point; the major works, after all, are bound to turn up on the society’s programs, festival or not.

This year’s series is American Voices, 1750-2008, a five-concert overview of American music from colonial times to the present. The real weight, naturally, is at the contemporary end, since it has been in the last century that American music has flourished. The earlier works are mostly forgettable oddities like John Antes’s Trio in D minor (Op. 3) for two violins and cello, which opened the Tuesday evening concert at the New York Society for Ethical Culture.

Antes composed the piece in 1780 while working as a missionary in Egypt. But neither Egyptian nor American influences peek through its graceful European contours. Imagine the charm of a Mozart divertimento without Mozart’s ingenuity. The work’s flatness could not be attributed to the performance by members of the Jupiter String Quartet, who produced a consistently warm sound here and in the rest of the concert’s first half. Still, the society had them tread water for a while, following the Antes with minor Gershwin, the likable but scarcely memorable “Lullaby” (1919) for string quartet.

The real business of the first half was the Barber Quartet for Strings (Op. 11) and Ruth Crawford Seeger’s “String Quartet 1931.” The Barber, composed in 1936, presents the magnificently intense Adagio for Strings in its original texture and context, surrounded by vigorous allegros. The Jupiter players gave it a brisk, rich-toned reading. But it sounded more than ever like a Romantic throwback beside the rugged, more forward-looking Seeger.

After the intermission the clarinetist David Shifrin and the pianist Ann-Marie McDermott gave a spirited account of Bernstein’s Latin-tinged Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (1942). And the flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, the bassoonist Milan Turkovic and the hornist William Purvis joined Mr. Shifrin and Ms. McDermott for the premiere of “A Gift” (2007), an appealingly complex, lyrical score by Joan Tower, which draws on everything from the Rodgers and Hart song “My Funny Valentine” and Lisztian piano figures to swirling clarinet lines and singing themes for the horn and bassoon.

The series American Voices, 1750-2008 concludes on Feb. 22 and 24 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture; (212) 875-5788, chambermusicsociety.org.

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