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MUSIC

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MUSIC REVIEW

Tuvan Throat Singers, Together in Spirit With Arvo Pärt

By JAMES R. OESTREICH

APRIL 25, 2014

In a promotional letter, the composer David Lang called “collected stories,” the weeklong series of programs he is overseeing at Zankel Hall, “a little festival of odd music.” The house was full again on Wednesday, as it had been for the first concert, on Tuesday, and probably few of those present would have disputed Mr. Lang’s characterization.

The two segments of this fascinating and lovably perverse program — a set of folkish songs rendered by Huun-Huur-Tu, a quartet of Tuvan throat singers and instrumentalists, and a rare performance of “Passio,” Arvo Pärt’s spare setting of the story of Jesus’ Passion from the Gospel of John — were not only odd individually, but also befuddling in combination.

Mr. Lang’s basic idea is to show the many ways music has been used to enhance storytelling, and these were certainly disparate examples. But his further attempt to unify each concert with a thematic word or two in this case shed more mystery than light.

Spirit? True, the term applies to Mr. Pärt’s sacred work in every sense, but to the songs of Tuva (a Russian republic, along its border with Mongolia), it worked only in the general sense that all music is a function of spirit, lowercase. From what little I could glean of the commentary delivered by one of the Tuvan musicians (spoken too closely into a

microphone to be heard clearly) and from the music itself, the songs were secular, related mainly to nature: birds, horses, the landscapes of the steppes and mountains.

The oddity of this music lies in the vocal production. Growls, rasps and croaks emanate from deep in the throat and typically form drone chords, with overtones somehow manipulated to produce added whistling sounds, even melodies, high above.

It takes a lot of breath to project these sounds, and the resulting style can initially strike the Western ear as brash, if not crude: at times a sort of sustained belch. But ear and sensibility can also adjust, and these musicians quickly proved themselves masters of their unusual craft, their sheer musicality carrying all before it.

Mr. Pärt’s “Passio” (1982), which Mr. Lang in that same letter called “the holiest work by the holiest of the holy Minimalists,” is the very picture of refinement and detachment: odd in that it shuns the rich vein of drama that others, mainly Bach, have exploited to the hilt in their settings of John’s text. With a sort of purposeful abstraction, Mr. Pärt divides the crucial role of the Evangelist among four vocalists, singing solo or in combinations, and they often seem, in quick upward and downward strokes, to be trying to erase their very tracks.

Only the text and its meanings count, not drummed-up drama, not personalities. Even Jesus, an almost constant presence, is limned modestly. But, oddly again, Pilate, though little more than a foil, comes closest to real melodic effusions.

The performance was excellent. The rising baritone Dashon Burton sang Jesus with proper restraint, and the tenor Nicholas Phan was as winning as a Pilate could be.

Julian Wachner conducted members of his Choir of Trinity Wall Street and a handful of fine instrumentalists, including the wonderful organist Renée Anne Louprette. A quartet from the vocal group Tenet, led by its artistic director, the soprano Jolle Greenleaf, sang the Evangelists beautifully.

“Collected stories” runs through Tuesday at Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall; 212-­247-­7800, carnegiehall.org.

A version of this review appears in print on April 26, 2014, on page C5 of the New York edition with the headline: Tuvan Throat Singers, Together in Spirit With Arvo Pärt.

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