A note to those programming classical concerts: The people cannot be trusted! The moment Chinese American composer Tan Dun took the stage on Saturday night at Strathmore with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, stray bits of artificial birdsong began leaking from all over the hall. Let me explain.
For this program — evenly split between Tan Dun’s own music and a pair of companion works by Igor Stravinsky — the composer/conductor provided a leaflet with a QR code that, when scanned, opened an audio file on your phone. (You can see where this is going.) That recording — a simulation of birdsong as produced by a sextet of ancient Chinese instruments — was intended to be deployed during an “interactive” passage of the evening’s closing piece, Tan’s “Passacaglia: Secret of Wind and Birds,” billed as a composition “for cellphone and orchestra.”
