Lyric Opera Baltimore stays true to form with their new take on Gounod’s Faust (in partnership with Arizona Opera) at the Lyric on April 20 and 22nd. Provocative? Check. Profane? Check. Occult? Check. The Lyric’s version of Faust is dark enough to tickle the heart of any Goth and its Mephistopheles will delight any fan of Marilyn Manson, with his brocade swag and red silk, top hat, and long black hair.

Faust’s story is simple. A learned scholar, wizened by age, Faust feels that all is lost. He can’t even commit suicide successfully. Then Mephistopheles comes offering the famous bargain: your soul, for youth. All the while, the beautiful, young Marguerite is dangled like an enticing prize for Faust to capture.

Temptations abound. Director Bernard Uzan takes his cue from thinker Pascal who said, “Mankind has invented entertainment in order to forget to die.” And in his production, temptation is writ  bold, complete with a Lady Gaga-like persona gracing the stage. Words pop forth on the black screen of the night as on the Las Vegas-strip: Sin, MAN, Force, Power, Love. (Faust is in French. If you don’t like reading subtitles, this backdrop is a quick crib sheet to the action.)

The romantic core of the opera–the seduction of Marguerite–has no novelties. There’s no need. Marguerite’s famous “Jewel Song” sparkles in high coloratura from the throat of Stefania Dovhan. For a brief, bright moment you could believe you’re in “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Mephistopheles is nothing but a “Puck.” Bring on the flame-licked scrim. . .

Bass-baritone Kristopher Irmiter’s Mephistopheles is a gentlemanly tempter, with his low wiles and coy self-absorption. While he doesn’t have a full, stage-quaking voice, he’s plenty evil. Bryan Hymel is no stranger to the role of Faust, whose tenor voice garners sympathy even as he’s the one to plunge the fair Marguerite into doom.

The real surprises strike in the final two acts, both chilling. Marguerite, now an unwed mother, seeks refuge. She finds a Vegas-strip “church” crowned with a neon-trussed cross. It is still dark and filled with a perfect Baroque chorus of nuns and deacons miming song and censor, frozen like statues. Marguerite throws off the nun’s habit and animates the scene. Three nuns surround her like Macbeth’s witches to condemn her drastic actions. The shock hits when Christ steps down from the cross to participate.

The final act brings out the straitjackets. We rejoin Marguerite in a madhouse. Here Dovhan has the hollowed eyes of an Edvard Munch painting come to life, her heavenly silver voice lofting in a song of love. She’s a wild-haired, wasted Madonna with bandages on her wrists, tended by red-wigged triplets in red fishnets and nurse white. Fluorescents flicker on, heralding Faust’s rescue attempt, contrasting sharply with the buttery remorse in his voice. But all is too late. The baby is dead. Only God can save Marguerite. No one can save Faust. . .

Some operas make you weep, others make you laugh. Faust chills. By bringing Faust into the harsh light of the present day, we get a perfect stage illustration of the contemporary debate about the value of condoms and the act of abortion.

Care to try it? Faust shows at The Lyric April 20 at 7:30 p.m. and April 22 at 3 p.m. If you’re lucky enough to be a student, you can get 50 percent off all seats at the box office or Ticketmaster. The password: devil.

On Wednesday evening, JACK presented an all-Xenakis program of complete string quartets. Composer Iannis Xenakis could be called an architect who stumbled into music or a composer who happened to be an architect–under Le Corbusier, no less. So scholars and reviewers will tell you he’s all math. They consider his intellectual structures first and foremost, aural excitements aside. A scan of reviews and blog posts reveals a dense underbrush of musical jargon overpopulated with the word “abstruse.” (This is a favor, as in the past not a few might have called it obtuse.) JACK blows this stuffy attitude to bits.

There’s nothing hard to comprehend by ear in JACK’s presentation of Xenakis. That’s why it’s so great that they’ve also made the first complete recording of Xenakis quartets on surround-sound DVD and compact-disc, and why Baltimore was lucky to hear them all last night.

Xenakis is really a humanist composer doing much by ear. “ST-4/1,080262″ was the only work on the program that completely owed its existence to IBM computer-generated stochastic action, explained cellist Kevin McFarland. To help us out, he gave us an example of such patterns out of chaos: droplets in a rain storm making up a weather system. In the case of this early work of 1956 – 1962, 10 parts were condensed down to only four. Droplets indeed! Here we find explosive pizzicato, as lively as a popcorn kettle bursting with heat. Fingers of left hands whip out long, sliding down the strings, bows tap on the body of the instruments. The cello gives off a siren wail as the viola gives us the sense of creeping down a hallway, deeper and deeper into the Xenakis oeuvre.

“Ergma,” from 1994, powered on with a hum of motherboard drones as thunder clapped around 2640 Space. Taunting tangles of sharps and flats muster and march almost like a Shostakovich waltz.

JACK saved the standout for last: “Tetras”–Greek for “four.” Christoper Otto on first violin began, his sound darting like a bee around the church before John Pickford Richards joined him on the viola. There’s grit here, plenty of effects, similar to what you hear in Gyorgy Kurtag’s Microludes, but with a mono-focus. A hive-collectivity of construction site sounds coalesces into unisons. Interstellar squeals ring out as left hands descend and rise along strings lightning fast. A dancing motif on viola passes off to cello and centers us for a while, before the whole breaks into fabulous muting.

We hear radio tuning dial pure without static, before jumping on a race started by second violin and viola. Ultimately, cohesion rises out of a doppelganger interlude begun by Otto on violin. Then the players drop back and only the drone of a fan remained. A revel of silence deepened before applause erupted.

The freshness of JACK’s approach welcomes new listeners and educated fans alike. Their interpretations bristle, sparkle, and ache. When I think of those who’ve made their name running the same “abstruse” gauntlet of composers, like Kronos Quartet (who taught JACK, in fact), I think they better look to their laurels. These four young players will steal their show!

It’s no wonder that JACK Quartet plays Poisson Rouge often, but we hope they’ll come back to Baltimore soon. Kudos to Brian Sacawa and his $5,333 Kickstarter grant for bringing them to our attention.

Osvaldo Golijov

No, Emaneul Ax didn’t debut a piece by Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra June 3. The celebrated pianist occupied the second half of the BSO’s Friday night program and was billed the star of the evening–not the newly commissioned piece: Sidereus, which opened the evening. We were surprised a star such as Ax didn’t pack the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, and then assumed some concertgoers ate dinner to avoid the new Sidereus and then catch Ax after the intermission.

The inspiration of Golijov’s Sidereus comes from the time when descriptions of the moon and stars moved from the domain of poets to science. Galileo ushered that in with his 1610 treatise Sidereus Nuncius, which offered readers observations of the moon as revealed through his telescope.

Golijov’s work, shimmering in texture and brighter by far, did surpass the minimalism of a different BSO co-commission from earlier this season, Philip Glass’ Icarus at the Edge of Time. Trumpeter Andy Balio gave Sidereus a real polish before the piece reduced down to an uninspired glacial drift. In no way did it fly from the shadows of the great celestially inspired music selected by Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey– such as György Ligeti’s Atmospheres and Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra. Strange that composers and film scorers can find so much intoxication in choosing the muse of silent space as subject.

Golijov’s Sidereus is only an overture, so we hope the 35 orchestras (from top-tier to student) that pulled together as the Henry Fogel Commission Consortium to pay for the piece didn’t spend too dear. Something much grander could have been created to honor Fogel, the sometime leader of august bodies such as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and former senior adviser to and president of the League of American Orchestras.

The question Golijov’s Sidereus raises is when does does a contemporary work shed its newness and enter the repertoire? Is it time that matters? Or as it was in Galileo’s day, a question of who your patron is, pure and simple? To its credit, Sidereus does the descriptive duty well enough that one does not need photographs displayed from the Hubble telescope or space station to envision the cosmos. If it is to be revived after a single debut season, though, don’t be surprised to see someone enlist some.

Another problem with commissions: who plays them? The challenge of satisfying 35 orchestras is a big one. Each has its own personality, sound, and audience. Some of the best works, especially concertos, come from having one performer in mind to champion the work.

For example, on June 1, Mobtown Modern treated Baltimore to Golijov’s Ayre, a song cycle created for celebrated soprano Dawn Upshaw to celebrate Carnegie’s new Zankel Hall. Local soprano Lara Bruckmann filled Upshaw’s shoes admirably, ranging in tone and mood. Mobtown’s Ayre succeeded even more brightly than the earlier Synchronicity, Mobtown Modern’s collaboration with the BSO, performance of Glass Pieces, although less were around to witness it. This performance should have been sold out. (One wonders why a mention didn’t make it into the BSO’s last minute Ax e-mail blast.) The lucky attendees were able to enjoy the cool oasis created in the Windup Space on a very hot night.

Here a klezmer tune popped out bold. Here the sweetest singing of the evening concentrates on Sephardic words describing a mother roasting–yes, roasting–her cherished son. Bruckmann voiced the child’s purity to perfection. Brian Sacawa mixed in tracks of beating wind, club beats, and rolling thunder. Marcia Kämper’s alto flute, Meng Su’s guitar, and Elizabeth Jaffe’s viola combined in many moments to transfigure the space, opening its black horizon to distant lands. Here we had more bang for the buck, more spell for the silver. The journey was not interstellar but trans-global, and magical all the way.

While personal contact or relation between composer and artists should never be necessary for new works, it does seem to help. So far, Mei-Ann Chen is the only conductor who worked personally with Golijov on Sidereus. And she happens to be one of Baltimore’s own–sort of. Alsop brought Chen on as assistant conductor, where she conducted once, in April 2008, with John Corigliano’s To Music. She gave Sidereus its debut with the Memphis Symphony and in New England. It would have been great to hear how the former BSO assistant conductor has grown.

The other trouble with a new commission is figuring how to fit it into a program. Chen conducted the piece with Barber, more Golijov, and Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite–bold choices–for Siderius‘ debut. Alsop is much at home in the minimal wanderings Golijov offered in this piece, which made her transition to her other specialty–Brahms–more striking. The addition of Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra made for a night packed with sharp contrasts. In the case of Britten, the layers of music and sectionals were as easy for ears to grasp as the world as seen in the colored layers of a Jello cup. And the musicians showed off with gusto and flourish.

Alsop led off the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with a breathy yogic exhalation bearing down; the strings entered, and Ax listened, ready for his entrance. He delivered exactly what the audience paid for: Brahms with harmonics polished to seem almost understated. His reverence in the Adagio was shared in equal measure by Alsop’s baton. Together they brought a great, earnest close to a sprawling night of sound.

Karen Gomyo (from karengomyo.com)

Karen Gomyo and her “Ex Foulis” Stradivarius delivered a resplendent performance of Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall May 27. The Baltimore Symphony players then followed this up with their first-ever performance of William Walton’s Symphony No. 1 in B-flat Major. Both works demanded big sweeping sound from the orchestra, which delivered under conductor Carlos Kalmar.

None of this grandiosity was apparent from the opener: Benjamin Britten’s setting of Gustav Mahler’s “What the Wild Flowers Tell Me.” The players’ full effect wafted well off the opening woodwind solo and viola plucks, but any lush rising ripples so characteristic of the prismatic Mahler came across overly restrained.

The stifling reserve didn’t last into the Finnish composer’s violin concerto. Sibelius packs so much virtuosity into these three movements that less-able players are bound to falter. Sibelius had harbored dreams of being the grandstanding solo violinist. Starting, like he did, at age 14, is bound to be difficult. He never even made it into the Berlin Philharmonic. But nothing stops him in composing a flight of fancy and brooding calm that can match the more played Mendelssohn or Brahms concertos.

The gentle opening on the strings tingled the spine and Gomyo’s entrance was incisive yet gentle. Kalmar ensured great suspense from the symphony in its quietest moments, so that groundswells from cello and viola could really rock us from under the seats. Spacious, expansive, and profound playing set the bar for the rest of the concert. Here, before the second movement, the audience had to applaud.

Next, Gomyo skimmed across the pedal chords of horn and woodwinds like a crane swoops gentle over the sea surface. You don’t need to consult the program to know she’s working on a superior instrument, her range delights: high notes never run saccharine and the lower mahogany register sounds like it could bleed.

Now Kalmar dipped down deep into the well of what the BSO players are capable of or knew when to stay out of their way. He made sure none trod upon the others, and gave Gomyo room to range. Her playful stepwise song rode up with the flute like an exchange of laughter before the second movement ends with a glorious hush.

When the third movement draws gusto from martial bouncing of the cellists’ bows you’re assured the BSO is so going to nail this work. There were moments of a rich, full body of sound, spread across the orchestra, that approach what you expect from a top-tier orchestra. And all throughout, Gomyo’s darting accomplishment lightens, lifts, and even leads this achievement.

Gomyo, in her twenties, will come back for many future seasons if the applause this evening judges true. Rarely does the BSO’s audience demand an encore before intermission; they did from her. No surprise given the real gusto of concertmaster Jonathan Carney’s kiss of her hand after the first ovation. With charm of impulse she began a spicy Astor Piazzolla Tango Etude, only to break off, apologizing, that she hadn’t practiced it. She then launched into his more lyrical, glistening Tango Etude No. 4, keeping the spell of her Strad alive in the hall for just one delicious moment longer.

After intermission, the brass and timpani took over. Sir William Walton composed this first symphony 20 years before he got the “Sir” before his name. What a feat to follow up the more breathy opener and the reflective Sibelius. The Symphony No. 1 in B-flat Major is almost entirely punch, requiring a finale with a second timpani thrown in for full climax. You can easily hear that John Williams had Walton symphonies on his crib sheet for movie scores. After all, Walton scored many a film himself.

The Walton symphony got every ounce of vigor that these players gave when they launched into “Star Wars” earlier in the season. The brass section attacked entrances with fantastic confidence. Expect more when the BSO offers a night of John Williams’ scores in the summer season (July 22-23).

This program is in the running as one of the best concerts of the season, although this week’s upcoming Emanuel Ax show could knock it from the perch.

Pianist Emanuel Ax joins mastra Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony, June 3,4, and 5 for an evening of Osvaldo Golijov’s New Work (Henry Fogel Commission Consortium), Britten’s A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, and Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1. For more information and tickets, visit the BSO’s web site.

Alexis Tantau

On a balmy Baltimore night in May, the cream of local salon society crowded around Paul Cassedy’s table for another great night of what he calls “dinner and music.” It’s no mean feat for a Baltimore rowhouse.

Cassedy introduced Alexis Tantau, the night’s singer, and her piano accompanist, Elizabeth Brown. He toasted them with a comment about their earlier Valentine’s Day performance of Reynaldo Hahn songs: “More people need to hear this than can fit into my home.”

Consider that an invitation. On Sunday May 22 at 3 p.m., have an intimate “salon” experience at An Die Musik. Cassedy teams up with Henry Wong to reprise the songs of Caracas-born French composer Reynaldo Hahn–some of the most romantic music ever written.

Prepare to be wooed by mezzo-soprano Tantau, whose command of French allows her to be by turns coy, soulful, and profound. Brown and Tantau offer exactly what pianist and singer Hahn would demand: L’heure exquise.

Cassedy selected this art-song repertoire for his Valentine’s celebration for Tantau, who wondered if she’d have the chance to sing the program more than once. She’s already performed it two more times, including for Holocaust survivors in Park Heights.

Art-song, or mélodie, dates back to the time of troubadours. Tantou thinks of them as “miniatures.” Unlike opera’s long, drawn-out battle of arias, art-song delivers its emotional payoff in bursts of minutes. Plus, the text that’s set is far smarter, written by bone fide poets. You probably know some of the names: Victor Hugo and stormy lovers Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud. The accompanying pianist sets the tone by painting sound images of wind through fields, rain on a roof, or fish teeming in the Loire valley stream. Other times the pianist contrasts the singer’s soaring lines for heightened drama, capturing the twists and tensions of a love affair.

Cassedy thinks of art song as a diamond. “All the best poets known to man are condensed like diamonds into a tight structure,” he said during his May salon. “And the musician goes even farther to concentrate the glory of each instantaneous moment.”

Art-song is a fleeting pleasure, like the fists of lilies bursting in a vase on the piano in Cassedy’s front room. That’s where Tantau and Brown offered a preview of two songs: “Offrande” or “Present” and “Le Rossignol des Lilas” or “The Nightingale Among the Lilac.”

The polish of the performance filled the room with sparkle and charm that promises to expand into An die Musik’s second-floor concert room. But not all songs will be laughs or love. Case in point: Hahn’s setting of Verlaine’s “D’une Prison”–“From Prison.”

What was Verlaine doing in prison? Well, he’d shot his young lover, Rimbaud, in 1873 in a drunken fit, earning a jail sentence of 18 months. During that time he studied Shakespeare and Cervantes, renounced his former wastrel youth, and turned to the Catholic faith. Indeed, Tantau’s rendition condenses this agony into a bright diamond of stunning truth.

Hahn’s world, then, wasn’t all flowers and sighs. Proud Napoleonic princesses and celebrated courtesans competed to bring the best painters, poets, journalists, and musicians to the dinner tables and drawing rooms of their salons. Hahn, a hot commodity, made his pianist’s debut at age 12 at the salon of Napoleon’s niece, Mathilde.

Smart salon-goers, like literary colossus Marcel Proust, could find a free dinner every night of the week in Paris. You could find Proust in Madame Lemaire’s lilac garden for her Tuesday salon in May. Then he’d be at Princesse Mathilde’s Wednesday salon. But sometimes he’d have to choose. Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux had composers like Faure, Ravel, Satie, and Stravinsky also play on Wednesdays.

Proust feasted on those around him for stories–or he seduced the guests. He met young Hahn at Madame Lemaire’s. Long before Remembrance of Things Past, Proust dedicated his first short story to Hahn: “Poet, Singer, and Musician.”

Thus began a two-year romance. Many years later, in a 1903 Figaro feature, Proust betrays undiminished admiration for Hahn. To set the scene, Hahn plays his own work at Madame Lemaire’s piano. Proust writes:

“With his head slightly thrown back, his melancholy mouth slightly disdainful, letting escape the rhythmical waves of the most beautiful, the most passionate voice that ever existed, this ‘instrument of musical genius’ who is Reynaldo Hahn grips every heart, moistens every eye . . . makes us tremble as we bow our heads one after another like a silent and solemn undulation of wheat in the wind.”

Tantau surely gives that genius a run for his money. Catch her this week because she’s bound for Languedoc in the south of France to perform and study for a year. With her crystalline talent, there’s a good chance she’ll be away longer. And after the music, prepare to enjoy a selection of aphrodisiac treats in keeping with the romantic decadence of the experience.

Alexis Tantau and Elizabeth Brown perform the songs of Reynaldo Hahn at An die Musik May 22 at 3 p.m. Visit andiemusiklive.com for more information.

Conductor Gemma New (photo by Katya Chilingiri)

Just down the street from the Peabody Institute, An die Musik recently hosted two smashing world premieres and the melancholic masterwork of 12-tone titan Arnold Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire. The LUNAR Ensemble, whose members are all affiliated with the Peabody, managed to pack the house and then some. So no one present had a right to trot out Schoenberg’s quote: “Music in an empty hall sounds even worse than a hall filled by empty people.”

As you may guess from that quote, Schoenberg was no stranger to bad press or disastrous premieres. This program’s two world premiere composers have nothing to worry about on that score.

First up, Peabody grad student Sam Brannon’s Clarinet Concertino. Each movement of the piece was a fresh turn. The second movement mesmerized as two percussionists, Garrett Arney and Victor Caccese, bowed upward along the aluminum bars of the vibes. Cellist Peter Kibbe worked a similar line to create a brilliant miasma from which Gleb Kanasevich’s clarinet solo could rise out with a surprising melody that was tender and earnest.

Pianist Michael Sheppard set the tone for an exemplary evening by trotting out Chopin’s Fantasie, Op. 49 before launching into the premiere of his own composition Fantasy on Themes from Harry Potter. This tightly woven diversion pivoted around John Williams’ “Hedwig’s Theme” with wonderful surprises: a snatch of the theme from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, with plenty of rising rumbles and a superb moment of letting the overtones echo and roar. This owl flight is worth riding along any day.

Now to that work of mad genius: Pierrot Lunaire. You may or may not recognize Pierrot. If you guessed that he’s the white-suited clown from the Commedia dell’arte, pat yourself on the back. The “lunaire” part, as in loony, is what makes this work so splendidly strange.

Pierrot Lunaire first hit the stage in October 1912 in Berlin. The performance met mixed reviews. There was hissing, hysteria, and laughter. When it crossed over to America in 1923, the critics tripped over each other to hate it more: “Defying musical grammar!” “An unutterably silly thing!” Perhaps worst was H.E. Krehbiel’s condemnation, recounted by Nicolas Slonimsky in his Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven’s Time, in a Feb. 5, 1923, review in the New York Tribune:

Pierrot Lunaire is so new that enjoyment of it by such persons who believe that music is the expression of beauty in art will have to wait until all such persons are dead or chaos be come again.

Krehbiel died just over a month after that review. A Pierrot fan at this recent concert remarked that he had studied the composition for 12 years and rejoiced to hear it live for the first time with plenty of company. The very magic of Pierrot is an audacity of tone so distinguished that it still sounds as “new” to us as when Krehbiel heard it.

Twenty-one German translations of French poems about love, religion, sex, violence, and crime are the heart of the work. The instrumentation, motley: piccolo, flute, piano, bass clarinet, clarinet, viola, violin and cello run along in counterpoint as tight as any written in the Renaissance. The moon presents in some form in nearly every section. Poem 8, “Nacht,” begins Pierrot’s descent into depression where “dark, black giant moths” kill the bright sun. The cello weeps along with the bass clarinet, roiling together into the musical weight of a cluster of clouds. This music is like Dada meets the nightmares of Francisco Goya. The Age of Enlightenment breaks down into exaggerated bathos and tightly evolving chaos.

Conductor Gemma New presided over all this music with an emphasis on bringing out the character of Pierrot in every element. Sheepishly, she suggested this might not have pleased Schoenberg, but it did this listener.

Even Schoenberg’s vocal technique, Sprechstimme or Sprechmelodie, is not taken for granted today. Pierrot exploits the rigors of this technique called “speech-song.” Never is the soprano to sing operatically. She must always put timbre before pitch, and give a performance that falls in a rich mid-zone between song and speech.

Danielle Buonaiuto and Lisa Perry, this evening’s sopranos, switched off as Pierrot and mounted the role with ease. Buonaiuto’s last “Mein Lachen!” in “Gebet an Pierrot” cracked out exactly like the “laughter” of a drunken German wraith spitting out her absinthe. She achieved a high point as she raced through “Gallows Song” and into “Beheading.” The piccolo pierced the ear and Sheppard’s piano spelled absolute doom. The work’s metaphors have a particular character, as in this romantic description of a noose: “The scraggy harlot/ With a long neck . . . Lustfully will she/ Hug the rogue’s neck.” Can you imagine a sex metaphor so darkly comic in song today? Maybe in hip-hop.

The players of a 1924 Berlin performance of Pierrot Lunaire earned greater recognition than those of the premiere. Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky was offered an audition for first chair at the Berlin Philharmonic under Maestro Furtwängler. He’d been drafted to play Pierrot when another cellist didn’t want to sit through the more than 20 rehearsals required of him. Let us hope that some of our LUNAR ensemble members are equally rewarded. They deserve it.

Conductor Julien Benichou (photo by Robert McIver)

Synchronicity enjoyed a sold-out, standing room only debut last week. The new partnership marks a new musical cooperation between the young Mobtown Modern and the solid symphonic sound that is the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Orchestras across the nation scramble to cater to listeners under 30, wherever they can be found. Mobtown Modern curator Brian Sacawa and BSO Vice President of Marketing and Communications Eileen Andrews Jackson are making it happen. If that means taking BSO performers out of the concert hall and into the Windup Space’s well-tended bar on North Ave., so be it.

The Jan. 12 Mobtown/BSO collaborative performance of Glassworks by Philip Glass marked the first in what ought to prove a series of great successes. Recorded in 1982, Glassworks‘ six movements are old by contemporary standards, but its minimalism maintains its freshness. This performance’s intimate orchestra of 11, conducted by Julien Benichou, started off building up sounds in layers, but the grandness of the work didn’t become apparent until the group started the fourth movement, “Rubric.” Sacawa’s outstanding soprano sax added a warm human element that rose above the relentless din of Glass’ pulses and hissing speaker static, offering a sweet continuity from “Rubric” into “Facades”, the most compelling moments of the night.

What might have been done without? Guy Werner’s video piece. One audience member confided that he closed his eyes to avoid watching. The video’s failing was its reliance on the usual clichés: sunrise, sunset, the mass of humans moving up escalators, down escalators, dashing for cabs, crossing pavements to match the music’s multiple meters layering into a dense aural fabric. A more effective pairing is the Jerome Robbin choreography for two of the movements as danced by the New York City Ballet, first in 1983.

Best of all, Glassworks whetted appetites for more Glass on the weekend: Icarus at the Edge of Time. Brian Greene’s board book of the same name formed the backbone of this multimedia endeavor and collaborating with playwright David Henry Hwang in writing a script, while Glass offered up the score. Filmmakers Al + Al created a computer-generated universe for Icarus to fly in.

This modern Icarus does not fly toward the sun on wax and feather wings as in Greek myth. He flies along the surface of a black hole. He is going ahead in time, but his perception is that time slows down—a fantastic musical problem.

Is Icarus a “Peter and the Wolf for the 21st century” as Greene hoped? While falling short of that, it is the most visceral science lesson a kid could ask for—even if he or she is 40-some years old.

Greene acted his off-the-cuff science professor part admirably on Friday night. Even a glitch in the audio-visual booth didn’t make him lose a beat during his 7-minute primer on Einstein, relativity, and the elusive black hole. The narrator, NPR’s Scott Simon, kept the story flowing like a good grandfather.

Was Baltimore-born Glass the man for this story? The music doesn’t really advance the plot so much as match it. And unlike the master Prokofiev, Glass doesn’t give voice to individuals to offer charm or emotional complexity. For example, Icarus, the boy, is nothing but impetuosity and runs without motif. Musically, Glassworks, from the mid-point of Glass’ career, offers the greater sparkle and glint.

His 2010 Icarus remains a surface-level work, excellent for accompanying a film but without the ability to soar. It is effervescence and urgency without gravity-defying verve. It’s more of a black hole where time slows and listeners need the narrative, rather than a showstopper where hearts race unaided.

The real climax came prematurely, in the overture. Ceres by Mark-Anthony Turnage pounced on the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall audience–a wonderful opener. The final asymmetric volleys of percussion struck the drum of the soul like an asteroid apocalypse.

Now cue the stormtroopers! Between the Turnage and the Glass came what most listeners were waiting for, judging by the response: John Williams’ suite from Star Wars. There is something awesome about sitting next to a faceless Jawa, red eyes aglow from under the hood of his robe. Even better, the middle-aged woman on my other side was open-mouthed, panting, and bouncing in her seat as the BSO struck up the Main Title. The players launched us into the stellar spheres with full “booyah” brio. Under maestra Marin Alsop’s direction, they treated the score as they would a Beethoven symphony, garnering applause between movements. (Stormtroopers of the Galactic Empire were available in the lobby for photo ops afterward).

This well-chosen program highlights a certain irony facing classical music. On the one hand, you have a film score–Williams does rip off the best of the best–that can easily stand alone without a screen—as the BSO proved in spades. On the other, you have a new commission that begs for screen and narrator, thus turning the symphony hall into something more like an MGM back lot. The crossroads of all this activity is probably a spot more like the Windup Space, where people expect anything to happen.

This pair of programs isn’t the last time the BSO will collaborate with Mobtown this season. At the Windup Space, Sacawa announced Project 20 Remix. Twenty musicians, including several BSO members, offer up 20-second samples to 12 remix artists—among them, Gabriel Prokofiev (grandson of the Russian master). The only rule: each track must contain all 20 samples. Look for the results to be released on CD.

Photo courtesy Robert McIver. See his complete set of Glassworks photos here.