NEW MUSIC L A 1987 : BOULEZ CONDUCTS BOULEZ AND STRAVINSKY

Once upon a time, not that long ago, Igor Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps” made audiences squirm. Though written in the quaint and distant days of 1913, the music retained its forbidding veneer over the decades.

The delicate masses always preferred to hum along with pathetic Tchaikovsky. They found the latter-day Russian rite of a barbaric spring too tough, too harsh, too dissonant, too noisy, just too grotesque for comfort.

As conducted by Pierre Boulez Thursday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, “Le Sacre du Printemps” sounded mellow, melodic, orderly, dramatic, ultra-accessible.

That quirky realization may have something to do with the passage of time. Yesterday’s shock has a funny way of becoming tomorrow’s tranquilizer.

Stravinsky’s new-found gentility also may have something to do with contextual perception. On this occasion, “Le Sacre” shared the bill with a lot of Boulez’s own music--music that makes audiences squirm.

With the French composer’s fastidious, forward-looking and forward-hearing intellectualism so generously displayed, Stravinsky’s ancient primitivism suddenly sounded emotional. Overwhelmingly emotional.

The expressive appeal of Stravinsky’s ballet score was enhanced on this occasion, no doubt, by Boulez’s extraordinary delineation. He must be the only conductor in the world who can get through “Le Sacre” without sweating.

He doesn’t dance, prance, leap, pounce, jab or wiggle. He doesn’t even scowl. He is too busy beating meticulous time, giving careful cues, sustaining precarious balances, controlling complex rhythms, plotting cathartic climaxes.

He knows a valuable secret: It is best not to be hysterical if one wants effectively to convey hysteria. Therefore, he let the orchestra--and the audience--do the sweating.

With cool aplomb and analytical precision, he conjured a performance of monumental impact. He searched out subtle, impressionistic colors where other conductors settle for black and white. He stretched tensions, illuminated details, savored clarity and, when the right moment finally came, whomped the hall with the mightiest of dramatic thumps.

It was terrific.

Terrific, too, in its own dry and uncompromisingly austere manner, was Stravinsky’s seldom-heard cantata, “Zvezdoliki,” written two years before “Le Sacre.” The gentlemen of the Master Chorale, trained by John Currie, mastered its intricacies with deadpan security.

Boulez’s own compositions, which filled the first half of the program, proved thorny.

In three disparate works, one had to admire the inherent brilliance of conception. One had to marvel at the inherent intricacies of technique, the constant exploration of refined sonic effects, the probing concern for lucidity of structure. But it was all hard work.

In “Soleil des Eaux” (1965), Phyllis Bryn-Julson--dauntless prima donna assoluta of the avant garde--declaimed, chanted and spun out fragments of Rene Char’s whimsical poetry with uncanny accuracy of pitch and sweetness of tone. She found no interval too awkward, no phrase too jagged, no seemingly graceless demand unworthy of bel-canto sensuality.

The choral output, by comparison, seemed understandably tentative.

In “Messagesquisse” (l976), Ronald Leonard and six accompanying cellists reminded us that the vicarious pleasure of bravura flourishes, pulsating echoes and convoluted melodic evolutions need not be confined to romantic showpieces. The aesthetic key, here, is compression. Some ears might easily confuse that with confusion.

In “cummings ist der Dichter” (cummings is the Poet), as completed last year, Boulez asks a fragmented choir to dissect the syllables of the text in minute combinations and permutations that defy verbal comprehension. According to one of several voluminous program notes, the piece “aims to transpose into music the shape of the poem in its disposition on the white page.”

The abstract challenge did not bring out the best in the Master Chorale, but the cerebral exercise did seem healthy. The mystical knots of works like this do not unravel on first hearing.

The orchestra played appreciatively throughout. The notoriously conservative Thursday night audience listened attentively and applauded politely. There may be hope.