On Saturday night, the Portland Chamber Music Festival will host a spring concert at Congregation Bet Ha’am in South Portland, but the music may transport listeners to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The big piece on the program is John Harbison’s “Six American Painters,” which the composer wrote after spending time with the work of six painters at the New York museum.

Each movement expresses a musical impression of a specific painter: George Caleb Bingham, Thomas Eakins, Martin Johnson Heade, George Inness, Hans Hoffman and Richard Diebenkorn.

“I write a lot of pieces because I want an excuse for an activity,” Harbison said by phone from his home in Massachusetts. “Sometimes the research for a piece is something I feel is valuable to do. This piece I used partly as a chance to go to the Met.

“But I wasn’t trying to reflect in any way the structure of the painting, or even the feeling. It was more like what the general character or thought of a certain painter would evoke.”

Harbison wrote the piece in 2001. A version for flute premiered in Cincinnati in 2002. He later changed the composition by adding a version for the oboe, which premiered in 2003.

Peggy Pearson, a faculty member at the New England Conservatory and a longtime student of Harbison, performed the original oboe piece. She will join musicians from the Portland Chamber Music Festival for Saturday’s concert.

The Portland Chamber Music Festival performed “Six American Painters” several years ago at its summer festival. Festival director Jennifer Elowitch programmed it again for this spring show because Pearson suggested that a repeat performance was in order.

“I jumped at the chance, both because of Peggy’s strong connection with John and because this is one of those pieces that audiences can really enjoy on a first hearing,” said Elowitch, who will play violin on Saturday.

“I like the piece’s simplicity, actually. There’s lot of rhythmic unison, so we play together much of the time, and it gives the piece a lot of openness and clarity.”

“Six American Painters” is performed often. Then again, much of Harbison’s music is widely performed. He is a major star of the classical world.

Harbison won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987, and later received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. The Metropolitan Opera has commissioned him to write three operas, including “The Great Gatsby” in 1999. He is on the music faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Six American Painters” represented a profound change in Harbison’s compositional style. He used to write big pieces of music, often taking years to complete. Beginning with “Six American Painters,” he found himself writing smaller pieces of music, with less density and fewer notes. His music became more open.

Harbison said he has known Pearson since “when she was a teenage phenom. Now she is just a phenom.” He has written a half-dozen or so pieces for her over the years.

In addition to Pearson on oboe and Elowitch on violin, musicians include cellist Marc Johnson and violist Michelle LaCourse.

“John is the kind of composer that performers love to work with,” Elowitch said. “He’s kind and soft-spoken, almost self-effacing. I’ve worked with him quite a bit as a conductor, and in that situation he’s probably about as low-key as it gets. He is one of the most famous composers of our time, and I always think of him in jeans and a leather jacket.”

Saturday’s program also includes music by Mozart, Schubert and Dohnanyi.

Increasingly, these off-season concerts are becoming a big part of the Portland Chamber Music Festival programming regimen. Elowitch doesn’t want the festival to “disappear” during the 50 weeks of the year it is not in session. The off-season concerts and events help the festival become a greater part of Portland’s cultural life.

And Congregation Bet Ha’am is a particularly appealing setting for music, she said.

“The temple has a beautiful new sanctuary, and we gave the first-ever classical concert there last year,” Elowitch said. “There aren’t a lot of great concert spaces for chamber music in the area, and this building is a true acoustical gem. It’s also beautiful, and though I know this is an odd thing to say about a temple, but it has an almost ‘zen-like’ feel.”

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or at:

bkeyes@pressherald.com

Follow him on Twitter at:

twitter.com/pphbkeyes

 

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