Mr. Benjamin demonstrated to a nearly full house at Alice Tully Hall that he is a highly skilled conductor. In a program presented by the\u00a0increasingly innovative\u00a0Mostly Mozart festival, Mr. Benjamin led the\u00a0International Contemporary Ensemble, a crack new-music group, in riveting, lucid accounts of Messiaen\u2019s \u201cOiseaux Exotiques\u201d and Ligeti\u2019s Piano Concerto, both featuring the brilliant French pianist\u00a0Pierre-Laurent Aimard. After intermission, Mr. Benjamin conducted \u201cInto the Little Hill,\u201d his 2006 chamber opera, a grimly modern take on \u201cThe Pied Piper of Hamelin,\u201d with an eerily alluring 40-minute score. That Mr. Benjamin led such an assured account of his mysterious opera was no surprise. His depth as a conductor came through especially in the dazzling performances of the Messiaen and Ligeti works he drew from the superb players.<\/p>\n
This unconventional opera might seem hard to stage, though a simple,\u00a0effective production\u00a0was presented by Lincoln Center Festival in 2007. Mr. Benjamin\u2019s rumbling, spectral and mysterious music, scored for an unusual ensemble including basset horns and a banjo, worked its magic in Sunday\u2019s taut, intense concert performance…the agile soprano\u00a0Hila Plitmann\u00a0brought radiant sound, even during passages of sky-high vocal writing, to the Stranger and the Minister\u2019s Child. Both also sang the music of the Narrator and the Crowd.<\/p>\n