Orchestra 2001 presents Chinese fare

Having taken note of Chinese composers early in their international emergence, Orchestra 2001 now builds programs that go beyond obvious repertoire, take outsize chances, and achieve performances that get past the exoticism of the melodies and strangeness of their glissandi.

The unlikely arrival point at Sunday's "Chinese Visions" program at Swarthmore College wasn't so much the angst of the Chinese soul, but a sense of play. In no way does this trivialize the achievements at hand. The illusion of ricochet impulsiveness from pipa virtuoso Wu Man came from her great command of her instrument and clarity of purpose.

Also welcome was a lack of program slavishness that allowed the presence of Jay Reise's new Peru-inspired work for two percussionists, Lunahuana. Typical of the Penn-based composer, his choice of notes was elegant and, more important with percussion, his ear for timbre was incredibly precise. This short, winning piece doesn't take easy ways out.

Elsewhere, the program was dominated by Tan Dun, whose ubiquity both in film and in concert (Friday he leads the Philadelphia Orchestra at Verizon Hall) doesn't mean Western performers will apprehend key elements of his music without his conducting them. A performance that misses the fun in 1999's Concerto for String Quartet and Pipa would miss much.

American adults have a limited capacity for silliness, but the concerto's performance had such an encroaching air of playfulness that you didn't question whether the music's impulsive gyrations have a legitimate place in concert.

But just when you start congratulating yourself at how comfortable you are with Chinese idioms (which with Tan have a folklike directness) along comes Transformation in Purple, a new piece for solo pipa by Taipei-born, Paris-based May-Tchi Chen, a dense work that careers from one unlikely event to the next in a welter of notes. The piece knew where it was going but I did not.

The second half ended with Tan's Circle for Four Trios, Conductor and Audience, which called for small instrumental groups positioned around the auditorium, while music director James Freeman told the audience how it would be part of the piece.

Audience participation can be annoying. But at least in this piece, we were asked to create massive sighs and gossip amongst ourselves. Objectively speaking, there's not a lot of alluring substance here. With a "why not?" air of experimentation, it veers from atonal Webernesque abstraction to elegant nature painting. But the experience was successful, if only because you trust that Freeman won't make you do something stupid. After all, stupid is very different from silly.