A CONCERT IN HONOR OF LEONARD BERNSTEIN. Music by Bernstein, David John Olsen, Elliot Goldenthal, Kamran Ince. Brooklyn Philharmonic, Tania Leon, Steven Mercurio, Lukas Foss, conductors. Tuesday night. Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd St., Manhattan.
He's out of town and his birthday isn't until Aug. 25, but the organizers obviously felt this was as good a time as any to celebrate Leonard Bernstein's 70th birthday.
ASCAP and Meet the Composer got a showcase for three bright young composers, the Brooklyn Philharmonic got a Manhattan date, and Town Hall got a little publicity.
Although billed as a Bernstein celebration, Tuesday's concert actually was a disorganized combination of several events redeemed entirely through the music.
Although the hall was not nearly filled, there weren't enough programs, so an announcer provided narration. The program was badly arranged, and a lot of time was spent waiting as musicians filed on and off stage.
Still, there was a lot of good music: four rarely heard Bernstein works, as well as pieces by three young composers - David John Olsen, Elliot Goldenthal' and Kamran Ince - chosen by ASCAP, a music industry organization, and Meet the Composer, which helps composers get performances.
The Bernstein music, all of it from his younger days, was uniformly excellent.
'Brass Music' offered half a dozen humorous and individual pieces celebrating the family dogs. A selection of "Anniversaries" for piano (Kenneth Bowen) was affectionate, evocative and deft.
Three French songs from Lillian Hellman's The Lark were modern renderings of renaissance chanson, sung a bit weakly by the Occasional Players. And the 1949 'Prelude, Fugue and Riffs', for clarinet and jazz ensemble, is an overwhelming piece, inimitable Bernstein, its nervous, witty energy skittering on the edge of chaos.
Spaced among them were the three new works. Olsen's 'Overture: Lulu' is a bright, clever piece in which a repeated, slightly bitter circus-like tune works its busy way among several more meditative themes, which Tania Leon conducted with brisk authority.
Goldenthal contributed 'Shadow Play Scherzo', combining sounds from the Balinese gamelan with thoroughly western elements. It is full of incident and some exceptional orchestration; the juxtapositon of blurted brass and more ethereal, heaving strings, harp and bells gave the impression of an oily sea broken by jagged bits of flotsam. The piece went on a little too long, but enough was packed in to make it worth rehearing. Steven Mercurio conducted effectively.
The piece by Kamran Ince, a Turkish-American born in Montana, was 'Deep Flight', which opened impressively with ominous rumblings from bass drum and basses, and then demonstrated the effects of minimalism on young composers.
Ince used rhythmic, harmonic and timbral devices reminiscent of Reich, Glass and Adams. The derivative elements eventually outweighed his own ideas.
Disorganized but rewarding, this may have been a better tribute to the spirit of Leonard Bernstein, composer, than fancier events held elsewhere.