HSO Intermix: The Twittering Machine At Real Art Ways

The title “The Twittering Machine” does not refer to your laptop, tablet or smartphone. It’s not (or wasn’t originally) about social media or Trump’s favorite mode of all-caps put-down or denial. The title, which is also the name of the next installment of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s Intermix series, is from a 1922 watercolor by the Swiss-German expressionist master Paul Klee, pictured here. It depicts a grouping of wiry birds in a kind of rickety contraption, part proto steampunk, part exuberant child’s art. Hitler famously labeled the piece an example of “degenerate art” and had it confiscated.

The HSO will be performing “The Twittering Machine,” Cindy McTee’s kinetic 1993 piece for chamber orchestra, which was inspired by the mobile-like work of Klee. The music hurdles and spins, swooping back on itself with bright phrases from the horns and woodwinds, restated in playful and bold cannonlike fashion. The music brings to mind some of Stravinsky’s jazzy chamber orchestra pieces from the World War I era. The Intermix series is designed to take classical music out of the sometimes stuffy confines of the concert hall and allow the audience to get up close to the players and the music, in this case, inside the galleries of Real Art Ways. The HSO will also perform sections of Dmitri Shostakovich’s eighth string quartet and a chamber symphony.

Attend the HSO’s final Intermix concert of the season at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St. Hartford, on Thursday, March 29, at 7:30 p.m. $25. hartfordsymphony.org/tickets