Over the past few days, concert goers at the Aspen Music Festival heard a Chinese composer’s piece for piano and orchestra that swerved from celestial beauty to agonizing noise, a saxophonist who delineated music by composers from Baroque to Björk with a pop artist’s flair, Wynton Marsalis’ delightful jazz-infused version of a Stravinsky classic, and a 45-minute rumination of the history of time that spread sections of the orchestra around the perimeter of the music tent.
Can’t say the music festival is doing the same-old, same-old. And most of it delivered the goods with ear-pleasing virtuosity.
The marquee event was John Luther Adams’ “An Atlas of Deep Time,” which opened Sunday’s Festival Orchestra program with a redefinition of “world music.” Literally, the composer intended to immerse the audience in the earth’s history, from the planet’s formation to now. Like his “Crossing Open Ground,” which took place outside the music tent before the previous Sunday’s concert, it bypassed the usual hierarchy of melody-harmony-rhythm, instead using the sonic elements of music to create an immersive experience.
A sort of rumbling, sound-shifting meditation, it stacked clusters of chords, played with dynamics and situated separate sections to resonating around the space with surround sound. Messiaen, a 20th century composer who famously derived his music from bird song and representations of vastness (I kept thinking of his “From the Canyons to the Sky”), would have loved it. Musicians I talked with at intermission did not. “I tried, but after 10 minutes of the same chord I couldn’t,” one said. Some civilians loved the hypnotic aspects of it. It’s all in what you expect from music.
The second half gave conductor David Robertson more traditional music to work with. Listeners could appreciate the lush melodies of Chausson’s “Poème,” played with silvery precision by Luna Choi, winner of last year’s vioin competition, and revel in Debussy’s vivid scene-painting in “La Mer,” both conducted with Robertson’s clearly delineated approach and expressive body language.
