Music Review | ’NewMusicMannes’: Japanese Gardens Meet American ?Activities?

The Mannes Contemporary Music Festival is presenting a diverse array of modern works over four nights this week, some still hot off the laser printer. The festival began on Monday night with a concert by the ensemble NewMusicMannes, directed by Madeleine Shapiro, in the concert hall of Mannes College the New School for Music. The program held to no overarching theme, but the best of what was offered neatly illustrated the diversity of options available to modern composers.

The Finnish composer Jukka Tiensuus Plus was effectively a musical game: the clarinetist Mara Plotkin and the cellist Andrea Lee played identical phrases minutely out of sync, each taking turns at leading the other. Playful melodic fragments coalesced and bent, producing throbbing overtones. The players meshed in scampering, circling lines and growls, then parted, the piece ending as it had begun.

Three Watercolors, a beguiling song cycle by Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, from Azerbaijan, described a young womans grief, longing and hope in three texts by Nigyar Rafibeyli.

The soprano Katherine Dain sang with rich tone, investing her lines with deep emotion. Tayeon Kim, on flute, accompanied with dusky lines and windy whorls, while the pianist Bryan Wagorn played stark pulses and zitherlike strums on prepared piano. The gentle prelude and interlude were haunting processions of twinkles, clangs and thumps.

American Activities, a brass quintet by the colleges composer in residence, Paul Moravec, featured two fast sections — one rollicking and jazzy, the other filled with bristling fanfares — framing a slow movement that recalled the lonely city mode of Copland and Bernstein.

In one especially lovely passage a theme was passed from two trumpets to trombone and French horn, then to the bass trombonist Derek Crosier, who played muted lines with refinement. The performance was sometimes marred by insecure intonation and articulation, but over all, the piece was effectively conveyed.

Michael Dobson offered exacting accounts of two sections from the atmospheric Six Japanese Gardens, for percussionist and electronics by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. Minoru Mikis Sohmon III offered a curious, uneasy combination of lyrical arioso, Noh-inspired inflections and the florid marimba writing for which Mr. Miki is best known outside of Japan.

The pianist Evelyne Jundt performed with vigor, and Steve Solook was an athletic marimba player. Tiffany DuMouchelle, a soprano, sang well and provided bright narration. Still, texts and translations, which were provided for Ms. Ali-Zadehs piece, would have been welcome.

Salvatore Sciarrinos Appendice alla Perfezione, a twinkling étude for 14 tiny bells played by Mr. Dobson, was a welcome digestif.

Concerts continue tonight and tomorrow night at 8, 150 West 85th Street, Manhattan; (212) 580-0210, Ext. 4816, or newschool.edu/mannes.

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