Concert Review

Friday night's concert of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project was all about the Greek debt.

Ours to them, that is. The program at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall, titled "Apollo's Fire," celebrated the continuing power of ancient mythology in Western thinking and art of the 20th and 21st centuries.

People who like the sound of straight-toned voices singing intricate counterpoint at close intervals had a feast at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall on the evening of Good Friday, as the Boston Modern Orchestra Project presented works with "Passion" in the title by David Lang and Arvo Pärt.

To mark Good Friday, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project brought together two contemporary Passion settings: David Lang's "The Little Match Girl Passion" and Arvo Pärt's "Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi secundum Joannem."

It did not look much like a BMOP concert – only a few instrumentalists were present. But it was an appropriately grave lineup for the darkest day of the Christian calendar.

Say hello to Hans Tutschku before the concert, and he will direct you to the "sweet spot" of the room. This past weekend was Tutschku's second "festival" of the year, where space and technology would share the limelight. Last fall, he curated "Sound in Space Festival: The Art of Interpretation of Electro-acoustic Music" at the Fenway Center in Boston. This spring, Tutschku was curator of a two-day festival "Jour, Contre-jour" with the Fromm Players at Harvard, held in the university's John Knowles Paine Concert Hall Friday night and last night.

The Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard presented the first of two explorations of some of electronic music's seminal large-scale works Friday evening at Paine Hall, engaging Boston’s preeminent new music ensemble, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, to tackle challenging works by Charles Wuorinen, Gérard Grisey and Jonathan Harvey.

Leave it to the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) to completely revitalize the concept of a concerto concert. This past Friday night at Jordan Hall, the orchestra, conducted by music director Gil Rose, presented a thoroughly energizing and invigorating concert of five concerti written by composers born between 1923 and 1979.

Billed as Strange Bedfellows: Unexpected Concertos, the program featured concertos for, respectively, viola, electric guitar, mandolin, theremin, and horn.

Tales of thwarted love frequently do well on stage, and the story of Heloise and Abelard is no exception. This dramatic tale, discovered by scholars through recovered love letters, is all the richer for being true: passionate love between a tutor-philosopher, Abelard, and his brilliant student, Heloise; an unexpected pregnancy; a violent castration. It is cinematic or—as composer John Austin ’56, LL.B. ’60, thought—operatic.

On Friday, January 27, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (a.k.a. BMOP) presented Strange Bedfellows: Unexpected Concertos, showcasing instruments don't get to be concerto soloists as often as their ubiquitous cousins, like violin or piano. Here, the spotlight was on viola, electric guitar, mandolin, theremin and French horn. All but one of the pieces were written in the last six years, and together they showed that contemporary classical music is thriving — don't let anyone tell you different!

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project called its program of five "unexpected concertos" at Jordan Hall Friday "Strange Bedfellows." None (well, almost none) of the music induced slumber, however. Created for an odd array of solo instruments (viola, electric guitar, theremin, mandolin, French horn) accompanied by instrumental ensembles of various size and composition, the works prodded at the frontiers of traditional concerto form. Electronic and acoustic sounds engaged in conversation - sometimes in rancorous argument - across the centuries, forcing us to rethink this venerable genre.

If you're one of those concertgoers who look forward most to the concerto, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, led by its artistic director Gil Rose, had a concert for you Friday night at Jordan Hall.