An Evening of Synergistic Playing

Synergy, my dictionary says, is the cooperation between different groups, their interaction producing a combined effect greater than the sum of their individual effects. In his great two-volume study, “Synergetics,” R. Buckminster Fuller shows that synergy is a force for improving the world--metals interact to get stronger. When people cooperate, they increase the wealth in society; when they are isolated, they act warlike.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic chose the path of peace Thursday night for “Synergy” at USC’s Bing Theater. In this special program designed to help overcome the isolation between conductor and composer, four recent works by young composers were conducted by four young conductors. The synergistic orchestra was divided between members of the Philharmonic and students in the USC Symphony; had I closed my eyes I never would have known it wasn’t fully professional.

Esa-Pekka Salonen, who acted as a mentor to the composers and conductors, played master of ceremonies Thursday, asking the conductors how they caught the conducting bug and how they would describe the pieces they were about to perform. The conductors, whether cocky or humble, did a winning job of personalizing unfamiliar music.

Where the synergy idea stopped, however, was in the music itself. The composers, whose ages ranged from early 20s to early 30s, demonstrated the kind of spectacular flare for orchestral writing that allowed them to stand out among the more than 200 applicants for the gig. But composers who display such competence in handling orchestral complexities at the early stages of a career tend to be those who best play the game, not the quirky individualists. These are composers less interested in stretching the language than in finding a kind of accessible narrative, in being well understood.

Mason Bates’ “Ode,” which was originally written to precede a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, toys with the symphony’s famous tune with brightly illuminated instrumental effects almost as if it were a cinematic prelude to the most grandiose setting of the theme that you could imagine. Instead, it collapses into a climactic destruction; sirens and the cocking of an unloaded shotgun spell out war. Quietude returns, and we are meant to be ready for Beethoven’s own famous plea for peace.

Steven Burke’s “Clockwise,” a memorial tribute to his teacher, the composer Jacob Druckman, is similarly direct in the emotions it speaks. A thudding heat-beat rhythm that Druckman derived from the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, relentlessly drives the score. In the center is a heartfelt violin solo that the composer described as representing his feeling of anger over Druckman’s death. The writing has power, merging Druckman’s distinctively aggressive but resplendent orchestral sound with Burke’s own more fretful one.

Carlos Carrillo-Cotto’s seductive “Cantares”--its title meant to represent a series of songs that blend into each other--has allusions to early music and Middle Eastern singing. This was the one score that seemed to speak in more than one style, although the composer’s liquid lyricism ultimately overwhelms all else. The earliest piece on the program--it had its premiere at Pepperdine University eight years ago, practically a lifetime away for a young composer--made one especially eager to hear something current.

The evening’s ambitious work was “Sinfonia delle Ombre” (Symphony of Shadows) by Naomi Sekiya, a doctoral student at USC who attracted attention two years ago when Simon Rattle conducted her impressive piano concerto, “Deluge,” at the Ojai Music Festival. The 25-minute symphony broke the mold from the other 10- to 15-minute, predictably arch-shaped pieces. Indeed, it was too ambitious for the project, and only two of its three movements could be played.

The inspiration is Dante’s “Inferno,” and Sekiya’s grandly orchestrated score produced an inferno of atmosphere, with gripping instrumental effects that ranged from a fragile flute to massive orchestral explosions, viscerally weighed by the thudding bass drum. It is a vast, bold world of sound that Sekiya conveys, as she becomes increasingly confident with each new piece. The full symphony needs to be heard.

The four conductors were all but typecast for the pieces. Allistair Willis, the cocky one, merrily delighted in Bates’ flashy colors. Scott O’Neil’s big beat underlined Burke’s stinging emotions. Sarah Ioannides did a lovely job in conveying Carrillo-Cotto’s undulating lyricism. James Gaffigan dug whole-hog into Sekiya’s sonic inferno.

Two important service organizations, the American Symphony Orchestra League and the American Music Center, were the synergistic center of this valuable enterprise