Getting it right, not getting there first.

I heard a terrific performance of Varèse's not-often-enough heard Arcana last night (by the HR-Sinfonieorchester under Peter Ruzicka*) — the pacing and balance were just right, between the brass and everyone else as well as in those tricky dry percussion-dominated segments — and this was a useful reminder of what a tight and forward-moving piece Arcana is, particularly when compared to the composer's other, earliest suriving large orchestra piece, Amériques which, arguably more exuberant and inventive throughout (those sirens!), tends to stall at moments through its dependence on brute force for continuity as it lacks the strongly cohesive elements present everywhere in Arcana.

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* Yes, this was another one of those Forum Neue Musik concerts that didn't really feel so much like a, well, new music concert.  It did feel well-composed as a concert, with nice internal connections (particularly a common use of reference pitch complexes or sonorities throughout pieces) as well as contrasts between the four pieces: Crumb's A Haunted Landscape, Ruzicka's own Spiral (a concerto for four horns and orchestra), a Scriabin arrangement by Haas and the Varèse.  But it was the almost century-old Varèse that was most fresh in sound, the Crumb was an audience-friendly overture (someone quipped that it was a "Prelude to an Afternoon of  Modern Music Clichés", which was not far off the mark, although I think the problem comes with the lack of development of those clichés, particularly the use of exact repetitions, which in this style, sounds too much like stock modernist-imitat film music), the Ruzicka was very professional but missed many opportunities to go from professional to interesting (in particular, one would have liked to hear some more independent use of the four soloists) and was ultimately not memorable, and the Haas arrangement of Scriabin's 9th Sonata was mostly very good, but his promising ideas with the use of an accordion and some percussion were defeated in this performance by their physical isolation in the hall, such that sounds that should have been striking within the ensemble texture were made them the aural equivalent of sore thumbs.  This should have been a concert in the regular season of the orchestra, not a Forum Neue Musik concert.