Music Reviews : N.Y. Ensemble Performs Elliot Carter at LACMA

The latest Monday Evening Concert turned out a difficult night of listening indeed.

Not that these programs are ever easy , but this one seemed especially arduous, combining three recent works by Elliott Carter with two works in Los Angeles premieres by younger and lesser-known composers. Oh, for a friendly face.

Monday’s concert--as usual in the Bing Theater at the County Art Museum--featured the New York New Music Ensemble (led by music director Robert Black), a leading and much-recorded contemporary music group. And, as evidenced this evening, technically assured and gutsy in even the most demanding repertory.

Carter’s “Con Leggerezza Pensosa” (1990) for clarinet, violin and cello, making its local bow, is a five-minute work in typically Carterian manner, with fiercely independent part writing, oppositional groupings and brain-flexing rhythms. This is tempered by moments of relative repose, when the protagonists actually seem to listen to each other--not a given in Carter’s instrumental “conversations”--in sparse pointillism and sustained dialogue.

James Primosch’s “Icons” (1984) for clarinet, piano and tape effectively integrates its electronic soundscape with live action, dovetailing lines and matching colors and attacks. Bursts of rapid-fire motion alternate with sections of pedal-point tape noises over which clarinet and piano offer misterioso noodling. “Icons” can sound not a little cliched, however, not least in its insistent use of arpeggiated tritones.

Californian David Froom’s 15-minute Chamber Concerto for varied sextet balances diatonic pastoralism with acerbic angularity, Stravinskian rhythmic urgency with lyrical counterpoint. An idee fixe runs through its six connected movements. On first acquaintance, a modest, enjoyable work.

Framing the event were Carter works, the “Enchanted Preludes” (1988) for flute and cello, six minutes of cerebral rhythmic calisthenics, and the Triple Duo (1983) for six instrumentalists, which is basically “Enchanted Preludes” times three. Incidentally, the Triple Duo was designed to be performed without conductor, but Black wisely led the sextet through its intricacies, with impressively virtuosic results.