Art Museum’s Hopper painting inspires new Pierre Jalbert score
Pierre Jalbert had the right idea. On Sunday afternoon in a gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, players from the Network for New Music unveiled his Light, Line, Shadow. The 15-minute piece, for seven players and led by Jan Krzywicki, had the benefit of having its prompt, Edward Hopper’s Road and Trees, hanging right there. Pictures at an Exhibition isn’t the enduring success it is because of what it tells you about the pictures that inspired it, and Jalbert’s piece works independently from the Hopper because it is, in itself, a small gem.
This last movement of Light, Line, Shadow, called “Open Road,” is serious and crushingly beautiful, and it pierces beneath the surface of the painting. It sums up a journey, but sends you on your way with something — a mood, the intimation perhaps of something lurking beyond those trees — that you didn’t have on your way there.
Light, Line, Shadow will be repeated Oct. 14 by Network for New Music. www.networkfornewmusic.org.