Osvaldo Golijov, check your rear-view mirror. David Bruce is coming up fast behind you, and at the rate he’s going, he’ll soon pass you to become American classical music’s darling composer.

Golijov became the hottest American composer of his generation by writing accessible, direct works like Ayre, Ainadamar, and La Pasión según San Marcos. In these and other works, Golijov is a musical chameleon, adopting the language of klezmer, tango, Latin American folk, Hispanic, Arabic, or Ladino music. Audiences and critics find strong emotion and substance in Golijov’s recent music.

Yet some listeners are puzzled by Golijov’s quick changes. His compositions so successfully adopt the folk or pop language he borrows that one searches in vain for the composer’s persona.

Enter David Bruce. Like Golijov, he writes immediately beautiful music and is influenced by folk and pop traditions—in Bruce’s case, Celtic and continental European music. Yet unlike Golijov, one never questions where the creator is. One would not mistake Bruce’s music for the pop and folk music which it hybridizes. Perhaps a more useful comparison is with Bartok, a composer who internalized folk music to such a degree that the rhythms, harmonies, and cadences of Eastern European folk music inform his concert music unselfconsciously.

Bruce was in town for the world premiere of his trio for flute, viola, and harp, The Eye of Night. It was commissioned by the Art of Elan for the Myriad Trio (Demarre McGill, flute; Che-yen Chen, viola; and Julia Ann Smith, harp), who formed the core ensembleat the San Diego Museum of Art.

The Eye of Night is a four-movement work distinguished by clear forms and unabashedly gorgeous melodies and harmonies. For all the tonal and neo-tonal composers out there these days churning out music, there are precious few with the gift for writing a great melody or theme. David Bruce, on the strength of this work and others found at his web site, appears to be one of the chosen.

Three of the four movements use lower members of the flute family (alto in the first two movements, bass in the last), giving the entire work a dark mood (it is a piece about night, after all). The first movement is a waltz, tugged at by off beats. The viola sports a florid line, with glissandi reminiscent of Asian music. In the second movement, a simple descending figure is echoed by the viola or harp on the off beats; the alto flute has a long sinuous line, and later on the viola pizzicatos resemble the strumming of a guitar. The third movement has a syncopated tune which would not be out of place on an indie pop CD, with more ethnic fiddling on the viola and downward moans from the flute. The last movement, if not a literal chaconne, certainly has the feel of one: a slow, somber procession, a phrase structure which repeats multiple times, over which a mournful, haunting solo for bass flute whispers.

The applause which followed the final notes of The Eye of Night was not the perfunctory clapping people give so as not to seem rude to a composer in the audience. No, the vigorous applause was sincere, a sign that a roomful of people had just been deeply moved by music they (or anyone else) had ever heard before.

I had never encountered David Bruce’s music before this program. He came to San Diego with some serious bona fides, including commissions from Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall showcased by classical music tastemistress Dawn Upshaw. On the basis of The Eye of Night and other works which can be heard on Bruce’s web site, it seems evident that he has a gift for writing accessible music which wears well after repeated listening. He is on the rise in America, and it would not surprise me at all if he reaches the top.

There are many reasons that an ensemble commissions a composer, but the best and most basic reason is in the hope of receiving a work which that ensemble can perform again and again. Another hope—but one rarely achieved—is that the work commissioned becomes a masterpiece in the genre. I believe that The Eye of Night will soon be become a favorite composition to perform and record by the “Debussy trios” (flute, viola, and harp) out there, and in allowing such a work to be created, the Art of Elan has done an invaluable service.

As attractive as The Eye Of Night was, I find myself more captivated by Nicholas Maw’s Roman Canticles, performed by the Myriad Trio with mezzo-soprano Susan Narucki. As opposed to the exclusively emotional sensibilities of The Eye of Night, Roman Canticles reaches out to both heart and mind. Part of this appeal has something to do with the elusive text Maw chose to set to music, Robert Browning’s “Two in the Campagna.” Unless one is an English Lit major specializing in 19^th-century British poetry, an understanding of the text can be gleaned only from multiple rereadings.

Yet once one gains insight into the issues in Browning’s poem—actual physical love versus an ideal love, the futility of poetry to express that love, couched in metaphors of nature, all of these thoughts addressed (or perhaps imagined to be addressed) to the poet’s lover—the musical support with which Maw underscored these ideas becomes all the more apparent. When, finally after seven stanzas, the poet is able to state his true desire, the music becomes almost Mahlerian to mirror the yearning. A stylized pastoral music underscores the stanzas devoted to describing the countryside, and a lively, impetuous music serves as a ritornello to express the poet’s questioning. In the final stanza, unable to stay fixed in the moment, unable to pin down his thoughts, the poet is left discerning “Infinite passion, and the pain/Of finite hearts that yearn;” here Maw’s music again hints at the endings of late Mahler symphonies, where the music strives to come to a final ending, but is unable to, and simply falls apart.

Maw was essentially a tonal composer, yet he loved the ambiguity possible when his music could move into atonal areas, and the power possible when his music could resolve from atonality back to an essentially tonal framework. His tonality was not a 19^th-century one, but rather the extended tonality of his British predecessors such as Britten and Tippett. Yet Maw’s fascination with the German and Austrian music of the early 20^th century--Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, and Strauss—was a source of inspiration and renewal for him.

Susan Narucki has only been on faculty at UC San Diego for several years, but in that time she has quickly become a local treasure. She is able to negotiate the trickiest new music lines, without ever letting her diction lapse or her warm, lovely tone disappear. She caught the bewilderment and the ecstasy of Maw’s writing in Roman Canticle; although the work is usually performed by a baritone (the poem does suggest a male narrator), her musical and dramatic tone was just right for the necessities of the work.

The Myriad Trio was joined by San Diego Symphony concertmaster Jeff Thayer, and UC San Diego cellist Charles Curtis, in the final work of the program, Chant de Linos by Andre Jolivet. It was composed during the early to middle period of Jolivet’s career, when he was very influenced by the neo-Primitive works of Stravinsky. Conceived as a conversatory exam piece for flutists, Chant de Linos unfurls endless sixteenth notes in the flute part. Demarre Mcgill, so musical and expressive throughout the evening, really tore up his part in a virtuosic performance that captured the fury of the fast sections, and the anguished cries of the slow sections (which sound like ritualized laments).

Throughout these three pieces, the Myriad Trio impressed with both their ensemble playing and with the strengths of each soloist. McGill has a beautiful, focused tone, always in control. Chen is a superb violist, able to play without vibrato and imitate folk fiddling, yet able to sing out with an expressive vibrato when needed. Julie Ann Smith delighted with her exceptionally strong sense of rhythm (a trait many harpists do not possess), her imperceptible pedal work, and her excellent phrasing.

The concert opened with Copland’s Elegies for violin and viola. The composer never published this work while alive, perhaps because he had recycled the material into later compositions. Yet it is well written for the instruments and has the compelling musical logic of Copland’s other works, so there is no good reason not to perform it. It was composed in the 1930s before Copland became concerned with musical populism; in fact, in 1932, Copland was considered an “ultra-modern” composer whose works laid on the shelf for years due to musicians’ inability to perform his rhythms or angular melodies. Considered against those pieces, Elegies is far more audience friendly, but Copland’s harmonies are spiky and the textures are lean and muscular. Jeff Thayer and Che-Yen Chen gave a persuasive account of this work, playing alternately with abrasive tension and with tough yet heartfelt lyricism.

Word has gotten out about Art of Elan; the concert was sold out; extra chairs had to be moved into the Hibben Gallery to accommodate last-minute ticket buyers. The space is very resonant—notes linger there, longer than optimal perhaps, a little too lively for some chamber music. Nevertheless, the intimacy of the space is appropriate for chamber music, and with musicians as talented as the ones showcased on the series, who cares if the notes reverberate a few microseconds more?

For a copy of the program, click here.

Listen to the entire concert for free on Instant Encore.