Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

�A Tribute to Great Cities� with the Brooklyn Philharmonic

Before I tell you about the contemporary works by Heiner Goebbels and H. K. Gruber on last night�s Brooklyn Phil program, I have a confession to make. I wasn�t there for the contemporary music: I was there for Ute Lemper, of whom I�ve been a fan for years. Lemper was on hand to render songs by Kurt Weill, Kander and Ebb, Jacques Brel, Hans Eisler, and others. And she did so with the sort of power, color, and panache that make Goebbels and Gruber sound pretty quaint.

Goebbels was represented by his �Sampler Suite� from �Surrogate Cities,� an evening-length work for amplified orchestra and electronics. The suite is in ten short movements, each of which carries the name of a Baroque dance-form (�Allemande,� �Gavotte,� and so forth). Also reminiscent of the Baroque are the affective nature of the movements: each presents a single state of mind while focusing on a single rhythmic idea. The musical materials are eclectic to a fault: saccharine tonal passages rub shoulders with bristling atonal ones; over the speakers, a sampled Jewish cantor gives way to indistinct watery noises meant to recall a city sewer.

All of this should make for a chaotic, cacophonous hoot. But the result is curiously tame. However bracing its rhythms, however novel its timbres and dramatic its contrasts, Goebbels�s is a city behind glass � a city looked at, not lived in. You keep expecting the music to punch you in the face, or sweep you off your feet, or just give you some crazy urban thrill. But it never comes. The half-hour work fails to accumulate momentum or tension, and the whispery major triad that concludes the piece sounds apologetic. And the cities I like don�t apologize.

I have no strong feelings about H. K. Gruber�s �Manhattan Broadcasts.� What�s interesting about this breezy, two-movement work, is that it doesn�t sound anything like you�d expect an Austrian work from 1964 to sound. Here, Gruber is much closer to Bernstein and Ellington than to Boulez and Stockhausen, and those who think serialism�s tyranny back then was absolute should take another look.

The program overall was imaginative and innovative, and, for a concert lasting over two-and-a-half hours, felt pretty fleet. The Brooklyn Phil opened with some Bernstein, moved on to a set with Ute Lemper, and closed the first half with the Goebbels. The second half opened with Copland�s suite for the 1939 film �The City� (with excerpts from the film projected on a screen), went on to the Gruber, and finished with another set from Lemper. This sort of eclectic programming is without a doubt to be recommended, but the Goebbels, meant to balance with the Gruber, did get lost in the mix. Nonetheless, if this is the sort of programming up new music director Michael Christie�s sleeve, I say bring it on.

posted by David Salvage 4/23/2006