It's easy to poke fun at the popular image of contemporary chamber music ensembles as scrappy collectives of composers and performers who give concerts in downtown lofts before audiences of 50 people, most of whom have been conscripted to attend by friends in the ensemble. In truth, that image is often borne out at these events.
So what? As the brilliantly performed program presented on Friday night by counter)induction, the New York-based contemporary music collective, proved, hearing new and recent works in such settings can be the most bracing of musical experiences. The core members of this collective are two composers, Kyle Bartlett and Douglas Boyce, and five impressive instrumentalists: Benjamin Fingland (clarinet), Asmira Woodward-Page (violin), Jessica Meyer (viola), Sumire Kudo (cello) and Blair McMillen (piano). The concert took place at the Tenri Cultural Institute on West 13th Street in a wonderfully intimate art gallery with vibrant paintings from an exhibition of Japanese artists filling the walls. The place was packed, meaning that roughly 65 people attended. I've seldom been among such intensely focused listeners. How could you not have been drawn in when the music was so provocative, the setting so inviting and the performances so compelling?
The opening work, Eric Moe's "And Life Like Froth Doth Throb," snapped the audience to attention. In this short, perpetual-motion tour de force for viola and cello, the two players trade off relentless eighth-note ostinatos. Fragments of themes try to take off but get pulled into the frenetic rush.
Mr. Boyce's "102nd and Amsterdam," for violin, viola and cello, which received its premiere, begins with a long episode of intensely soft squiggles, glissandos and shimmers. Once in a while a moaning rumination for the cello or an aborted melody for the violin break through and bring the diffuse harmonies into focus, though some fitful middle sections also threaten the uneasy calm.
Eli Marshal's "Opus Prime" for piano, violin and cello sounded like some crazed, metrically fractured rondo by a latter-day Ravel. Alexandre Lunsqui's "After Frottage," though intriguing, tested one's patience. Scored for wailing clarinet and bustling cello, the music seemed like the harmonically unhinged and extended transitional section of a longer chamber work.
The program included one piece by an older-generation composer, Karel Husa's 1982 Sonata a Tre, for clarinet, piano and violin. This riveting trio shifts between atmospherics, startling solo cadenzas, episodes of fidgety almost Neo-Classical counterpoint and spasms of wildness. The performers nailed the challenging score, especially the formidable young Mr. McMillen at the piano. All five performers also proved masterly in the final work, Georges Aperghis's daunting Mouvement Pour Quintette, ecstatic music that could be called Messiaenic.
With admission by donation and complimentary wine and pretzels in the lobby afterward, this concert offered New Yorkers with a sense of musical adventure and limited budgets a great way to spend a weekend evening.