One out of 10 new pieces of music is good, surmised composer George Tsontakis as he spoke at Saturday evening’s concert by the New England Philharmonic at Boston University’s Tsai Performance Center. One out of a hundred is great, and one out of a thousand is a masterpiece — “and we have to keep playing new music so we can find those,” he continued, lauding the modern-minded volunteer orchestra on the stage behind him.
Not, he added with a chuckle, that he was necessarily talking about his own Violin Concerto No. 3, which the orchestra was just about to perform with concertmaster Danielle Maddon playing the solo. But whether a new piece leaves a lasting positive impression on listeners only depends partially on what’s on the page, the rest rides on the way that music comes to life in real time.
The New England Philharmonic has rarely been known to play it safe with its programming, but Saturday evening’s technically challenging program did few favors for the volunteer orchestra and its conductor of the month, music director candidate Nicholas DeMaison. The orchestra didn’t sound like it had quite cracked the code on Tsontakis’s puzzle box of a violin concerto, which the composer spontaneously dedicated to the people of Ukraine during his remarks. The violinist David Oistrakh said that Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 needed to be lived with before it could be fully grasped; the same is likely true of this piece by Tsontakis, which would undoubtedly benefit from a repeat listen or three.
Before beginning the piece proper, DeMaison offered a quick tour of several critical moments in the music, but save for the plaintive ballad played by the solo violin near the end, those rarely stood out within the larger context of the score. The piece offered a few astounding moments of tranquil chromatic grace: here, the violin musing out over a pulsing, music-box-esquire figure in the orchestra, there, inquisitive animal noises in the winds — but the connective tissue between those moments sounded more fragile than usual.
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s raucous Bach fantasia “Upbeat!”, which opened the concert, also wasn’t the best vehicle for the amateur orchestra. Based as it is on the first few notes of Bach’s Partita No. 3 for solo violin (even if you don’t think you’ve heard it, you have), it only sounds clean if each instrument attacks the famous figure in perfect lockstep. The orchestra made a visibly valiant effort, but there’s only so exacting one can be — or so much rehearsal time one can have — with an ensemble that rehearses once a week.
Jonathan Bailey Holland’s nostalgic “Stories from Home,” a commission by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, sounded more within the orchestra’s wheelhouse. With watercolor string textures and assorted rattling and rolling percussion effects, the ensemble lovingly evoked the centuries of history and memory that can be contained in one building.
The evening concluded with Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5, again more uneven than I’ve heard this orchestra; a little rustic edge rarely does wrong by Sibelius, but the orchestra and conductor frequently pulled apart especially around the frequent gradual tempo changes. All in all, it sounded like a very good amateur orchestra, not an excellent one, and I know the New England Philharmonic is the latter.
The orchestra’s season of music director tryouts continues on May 1 with conductor Tianhui Ng.
NEW ENGLAND PHILHARMONIC
Feb. 26. At Tsai Performance Center, Boston University. www.nephilharmonic.org
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at az.madonna@globe.com. Follow her @knitandlisten.