By MIKE DUNHAM

“Ciuliamta cauyam” by Yup’ik songwriter James Afcan of St. Mary’s received it’s world premiere in symphonic form in Atwood Concert Hall on Saturday night — and the composer didn’t know about it.

Afcan’s Yup’ik dance song (“yuraq”) received royal treatment in “Exposition on the Anchorage Museum,” which Music Nova commissioned from Gregory Prechel of California and which the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra debuted this weekend.

Prechel’s piece falls into four movements, each informed or inspired by art at the museum, slides of which are shown on a screen while the music plays. The first movement focuses on Sydney Laurence’s big panorama, “Mt. McKinley from the Rapids of the Toksitna River.” But the first slides, accompanied by an intense fanfare, were of the museum building. It felt a little like an ad.

The music was ostensibly written to compliment the visual elements; when the slide showed a close up shot of the rapids, for instance, the score became roiling. In the second movement, “Wildlife,” a threatening bass tread went with a Fred Machetanz painting of a polar bear coming straight at the viewer; when another Machetanz polar bear, this one sleeping, came on the screen, the piano supplied a lullaby flavor.

Lurching bassoons played under the wildly-colored moose in Pat Austin’s “Easter Tableau” (which may have been flopped; the moose on the screen faced right and I think the ones in the painting face left).
The third movement featured art by and of Native Alaskans, both contemporary work and artifacts. The music had a “lower 48 Indian” sound to my admittedly west of Denali ears. But when I heard the horns blast out “Ciuliamta” I nearly came out of my seat. I noted a few of the slides — Machetanz dramatic “Quest for Avuk,” a mask by Sam Fox, a drawing by one of Afcan’s teachers, Milo Minock — but now the music snared my full attention.

I was at the St. Mary’s potlatch when Afcan first performed this piece more than 10 years ago. It caused a sensation. The crowd demanded several encores. It can be heard on the Surreal Studio CD “Gathering.”

In the program notes, Prechel acknowledges that three themes in the movement are “inspired by melodies handed down from the heritage of Alaska Natives.” In a phone call after the concert, Afcan was surprised to hear about the program or the inclusion of “Ciuliamta” in it.

Prechel told me in an e-mail that he hadn't found the names of the pieces he used or the composers while doing research in Alaska. But he apparently shares the enthusiasm of the St. Mary’s elders for the palpable power of this song. It prominently dominates the movement. Prechel brilliantly develops Afcan’s 12-note motif into the most exciting and satisfying part of “Exposition.” It had me on the edge of my chair. The same tune gets tucked into the finale, “Alaskan Landscapes,” along with the initial fanfare and other previously-heard themes.

Applause was loud, but no standing ovation. Perhaps the music would work better without the distraction of the pictures. The fully lit stage behind the screen made it difficult to see some of the images and the flow from one slide to the next sometimes seemed at odds with the music.

The audience was more pleased with “A Carmen Fantasy” by Frank Proto, which featured soloist Paul Sharpe on the string bass. He used a stool and hung his head directly over the body of the instrument, his left hand over his head, as if he were embracing the big viol.

Proto’s piece is a dreamy meditation on several themes from Bizet’s opera, intelligently arranged to sidestep direct quoting; the Toreador Song, for instance, is played slowly and mostly uses the less familiar verse rather than the much-parodied chorus. The double bass is treated as a melodic instrument, without special effects — though Sharpe managed to weave “Alaska’s Flag” into the first movement cadenza.

I generally prefer to hear these arias presented by a human voice. Though Sharpe’s careful treatment of Micaela’s Aria was exquisitely beautifull, it mostly whetted my appetite for the Met HD broadcast of the real opera coming to Century 16 on Feb. 3.

The concert opened with a dull recitation of Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto, hampered by the fact that Linn Weeda struggled with the fabulously difficult trumpet part and the other soloists — violinist Kathryn Hoffer, flutist Roxanne Berry and oboist Sharman Piper — were not easy to hear, despite the reduced orchestra. The high point of the performance was the slow movement, in which cellist Linda Hart Ottum, accompanied by Susan Wingrove on the harpsichord, supplied an elegant continuo.

The full orchestra played ravishingly in Debussy’s “Nuages” and “Fetes.” Individual instrumentalists, like Andrea Hall on the English horn, were clear and meticulous. Curiously, Berry and Piper could be heard more plainly in the big ensemble than they were in the Bach.

Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.