By Alan Rich

THE AXE MANUAL: BANG THE DRUM QUICKLY

Good Old Sir Harry

Two of the world’s most endearing originals showed up at the most recent Monday Evening Concert — their music did, at least. One was Ralph Shapey, long gone but long remembered by us ex–New Yorkers for his fiery spirit: a small, ill-tempered but somehow lovable fighter for a square deal for new music. That music was equally ill-tempered, tough-minded, seldom gracious, always big and argumentative in just causes. Cellist Erica Duke Kirkpatrick, pianist Liam Viney and, above all, percussionist Amy Knoles argued the cause of his Second Evocation, a bristling, abrasive piece, pure Shapey. Britain’s Harrison Birtwistle was the other one, still very much with us on the one hand, but actually not nearly enough. His The Axe Manual (a tribute to our own Emanuel Ax, get it?) gave the evening a bang-up ending.

Why hear we so little of Sir Harry? I ask the question every time one of his immensely expressive, massive works makes it through the cracks: his imposing Earth Dances or the sublime piano concerto Antiphonies, composed for Uchida. There are huge, original operas, while our local company celebrates Puccini. On Monday evening, The Axe Manual held the crowd — or me, at least — enthralled for nearly half an hour with just the interplay of piano (Aleck Karis) and Ross Karre, all over the place with his percussion monster: mostly woodblocks, temple blocks, vibe and marimba.

Best of all, the piece was an exercise of pure wit, of the Harry Birtwistle a small and selective world has come to know and love, handing out small but pertinent observations on the world around him and on the music he is being handed by a spirit of comparable consequence. I think that this is what music is supposed to be. Why did it have to stop?