music

Not yet 40, British composer Thomas Adès is one of the most popular, yet polarizing, voices in classical music today. He writes accessible music that appeals to large audiences. But he is often accused of pandering. The two works featured in the week's St. Paul Chamber Orchestra program illustrate both sides of that argument.

The concert opened with "Three Studies from Couperin," adaptations of harpsichord pieces by the French Baroque master. It resembles Stravinsky's "Pulcinella," but where Stravinsky transformed the Pergolesi, Adès is content to leave his source material virtually intact.

The work, which was composed in 2006, has little of the 21st century in it save for a few percussion effects and brass sonorities. It is charming and pleasant, but safe.

In his early Chamber Symphony for 15 Players, from 1990 (his Opus 2), Adès demonstrates a more sustained inventiveness, with less striving for approval. From the nods to jazz in the richly dissonant first movement to the eerily haunting finale, this is the work of a man unafraid to take risks.

Conductor Donato Cabrera made his SPCO debut, substituting for Adès on the podium. He made "Couperin" sound more profound than it really is and clarified the complicated sonorities of Chamber Symphony, making the prickly score sing.

Thomas Cooley was a rare tenor soloist in Hector Berlioz's song cycle "Les Nuits d'Été" ("Summer Nights"). (It is the mezzo-soprano that most successfully captures the sensuality of this music.)

Cooley's bright voice was most effective in the opening "Villanelle," a paean to spring. He was less successful in putting across the despairing and melancholy songs. He redeemed himself with a dashing reading of the final song, "L'Ile inconnue" ("The unknown island").

Cabrera displayed his expertise as an opera conductor with a reading that delicately supported the singer. His orchestra found the loss and agony at the heart of Berlioz's composition.

The concert concluded with Darius Milhaud's ballet "La Création du monde" ("The Creation of the World"), composed in 1923, under the influence of the current jazz craze. The jazz fugue depicting "The chaos before creation" was especially engaging. That "Man and woman created" took place to a cakewalk was highly amusing.

Milhaud is masterful at creating a wide diversity of colors from a relatively small number of instruments. Cabrera and the musicians created a performance of wit and infectious high spirits.

William Randall Beard writes regularly about music.