Scrappy and Invaluable, a Distinctive Music Ensemble Returns

BOSTON — It has been a theme of this troubled time: If the pandemic has ruined your massive birthday celebration, merely rejoice a yr (or two) later.

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project — BMOP, universally — turned 25 final April. However this unique, invaluable ensemble, which below its founding conductor Gil Rose provides performances and essential recordings of latest scores and long-ignored, usually American music from the previous 100 years, solely obtained the prospect to make merry earlier on Friday, with a sprawling free concert right here at Symphony Corridor.

This system was an endearingly eccentric if considerate one, starring the organist Paul Jacobs in Stephen Paulus’s sensitively scored, moderately bewitching Grand Concerto for organ and orchestra (2004) and Joseph Jongen’s entertainingly huge Symphonie Concertante (1926) for a similar forces. These have been paired with an organ work rewritten for orchestra — Elgar’s 1922 association of Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in C minor — and an orchestral work that will later be rewritten for organ: Messiaen’s early, beautiful “L’Ascension” (1933).

If it was not precisely a quintessential BMOP live performance — one might need anticipated Aaron Copland or Lou Harrison as an alternative of Jongen, and positively a dwelling composer, if expectations have been one thing Rose bothered himself with — it was nonetheless characteristically inventive, usually glorious and at all times dedicated. It was a contented reminder of what a potent pressure this band of freelancers has turn out to be in music that few different teams dare contact.

Even so, this was not only a trigger for celebration, but additionally for reflection — not least on the monetary and infrastructural inequities which might be shaping our musical emergence from the pandemic.

Two years in the past, it was extensively predicted that some smaller ensembles would fold within the face of public well being restrictions, and even perhaps some bigger ones. Though particular person musicians have struggled desperately, and a few have left their chosen career, financial help applications largely forestalled that final final result on the institutional stage, although the consequences can be felt everywhere for years.

Main orchestras have been in a position to get again on their toes comparatively shortly, if unsteadily: On Friday afternoon, I heard Herbert Blomstedt conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra, whose assets have allowed it to keep up a mainly full schedule this season.

Smaller ensembles have been compelled, or have chosen, to take extra time. Using freelancers who encounter frequent publicity to the virus as they journey for work, these teams face the prices of underwriting testing; the difficulties of discovering replacements at quick discover; and the dangers of cancellation — if, that’s, their recurring venues can be found for hire in any respect. Symphony Corridor apart, many larger halls that when have been in common use in Boston are below the management of universities, which have imposed stringent restrictions on outdoors teams within the title of defending college students.

“The large establishments simply have a special actuality,” Rose mentioned in an interview a number of days earlier than the live performance, noting that he has been in a position to keep away from shedding any of his 5 workers members.

“I mentioned to numerous freelancers that it was going to be actually onerous on the gamers the primary yr, and the second yr was going to be onerous on the organizations,” he added. “Within the first yr, no person was actually producing that a lot, however they have been getting authorities help and foundations have been stepping up, so that you have been getting extra earnings than you usually would, and never spending as a lot. Now that’s all stopped, it appears like actuality is coming.”

BMOP has at all times been a particular ensemble, conceived in lean opposition to the subscription season mannequin, and remarkably competent at elevating funds. Though it has by no means been in need of important acclaim, it has not often drawn massive audiences — although Friday was a gladdening, if not a profitable, exception.

“Once I began this factor, all people thought it was about new music, but it surely was at all times about an orchestra mannequin,” Rose mentioned, nodding to the “mission” a part of BMOP’s title. “I’m glad that I don’t depend on a ‘Nutcracker’ or a ‘Messiah.’”

What BMOP has come to depend on as an alternative is its award-winning catalog of recordings. Rose’s eclectic tastes had been documented in 69 recordings on his personal BMOP/sound label earlier than March 2020, together with the three commissions — Lisa Bielawa’s “In medias res,” Andrew Norman’s “Play” and Lei Liang’s “A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams,” the final two winners of the celebrated Grawemeyer Award — that the orchestra will carry out at its Carnegie Corridor debut in spring 2023.

Reasonably than experimenting with streaming or neighborhood live shows, Rose spent the pandemic clearing an enormous backlog of audio recordsdata that had constructed up over greater than a decade — releasing 16 extra recordings, and in June restarting classes at Mechanics Corridor in Worcester, Mass.

BMOP’s albums are a mixture of forgotten gems and spectacular new music, with a valiant focus on Boston composers and a giddy stylistic variety, encompassing Charles Wuorinen and Matthew Aucoin. A press right into a broader variety is coming: Rose’s next big project, a five-year effort to current and document operas by the Black composers Anthony Davis, Nkeiru Okoye, William Grant Nonetheless, Ulysses Kay and Jonathan Bailey Holland, was, he mentioned, within the works lengthy earlier than the reckoning with racism that has swept the music industry for the reason that loss of life of George Floyd.

That’s for the long run; on Friday, the main target was on the previous. If Jongen wanted a bit extra tonal depth and lyrical bloom for his Symphonie Concertante to actually shine, that made Paulus’s Grand Concerto profit by comparability. The enticing work was his third concerto for organ, and it proves him a grasp of the style; Jacobs’s sensible registrations at Symphony Corridor’s famed however not often heard Aeolian-Skinner urged that there haven’t been many composers with related facility at mixing the organ into the orchestral palette whereas additionally giving the instrument house to shine.

It was precisely the type of perception during which BMOP specializes, an opportunity to grapple with music that different ensembles go away to wither. Lengthy could this group proceed.