Xtet Lovingly Blends Ancient and Modern Ideas

Xtet is a stalwart Southland new music group, but it’s always kept its agenda open to X factors, right down to the flexible ensemble name. So it was less a genuine surprise than a refreshing twist at its performance at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Monday when its members veered from standard new music concert practice: There were no premieres, and the music tended to mix new and ancient ideas, often with more love than irony.

Eve Beglarian’s “Machaut in the Machine Age 1: Douce dame jolie,” for a sextet, is an unabashed blend of the medieval French composer’s language and the modern currents of Minimalism and even a hint of swing in the phrasing. Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer’s substantial “Theseus” is an engagingly melancholic rumination. A string quartet produces thin, ghostly tones, melodic shards, a tango moment and a gently shifting harmonic landscape, supporting the challenging harp part, played with cool elan by JoAnn Turovsky.

A rarity deserving wider recognition, Manuel de Falla’s 1926 Concerto, for harpsichord and five instruments, is a sturdy piece that invites some head-scratching as it swerves from Spanish gestures to nods to Scarlatti and Stravinsky. On the edges and at center is a key part for that 20th century rarity, harpsichord (here, a green model played exactingly by Vicki Ray).

After intermission came the concert’s centerpiece, Stephen Hartke’s “Wulfstan at the Millennium,” written in 1995, to be recorded soon by Xtet. It’s a masterful and curious piece, spinning off the inspiration of Wulfstan, a polyphony pioneer around the first millennium. Its 12 sections mix modern and medieval values, ending with the vigorous Bartok-like foray of the Recessional: Toccata, and it works. Hartke, who teaches at USC, has been creating some of the more provocative new music on the scene, digging into good ideas while avoiding “isms.” He has a good ensemble ally in Xtet.