Tristan Murail Performance in New York Reviewed

The Times talks about a rare Murail performance.

The New York Philharmonic offered a brilliant example at Avery Fisher Hall on Thursday night, when the impressive young conductor Ludovic Morlot led the United States premiere of “Gondwana,” a substantial 1980 work by the French composer Tristan Murail.

Sharing space on the program were “Oiseaux Exotiques” by Messiaen, Mr. Murail’s principal teacher, and “La Mer” by Debussy, who served as a spiritual forebear. Mozart, represented by his Piano Concerto No. 11 (K. 413/ 387a), was for once the odd man out, though hardly an unwelcome presence.

Mr. Murail, who has taught composition at Columbia University since 1997, was among the architects of spectralism, a musical style difficult to explain succinctly. Taking their lead from Messiaen’s emphasis on timbre and resonance, the spectralists during the 1970s used computers to analyze and map the acoustic properties of sound — the overtones produced by a given note, for instance — and used the information to fashion rich, strange harmonic strata.