The earliest work here, Grazyna Bacewicz's "Contradizione" (1966), set the stage with a colorfully orchestrated atmospheric haze that sounded almost electronic at first and quickly morphed into a series of high-contrast figures: smoothly flowing passages gave way to sharply etched ones; assertive writing melted into nebulousness.
That vision made the performance quirkily compelling, and in the closing Rondo, with its intense interplay between the orchestra and the soloist, Mr. Serkin seemed finally to appreciate that Brahms's more assertive writing, mask or not, has expressive depths of its own.
For example, if you're a little bit of a pushover and want to be a little more assertive, write that down.
That was very much the case in the more densely orchestrated Piano Concerto as well, a work in which tactile percussion writing and dazzling woodwind and brass coloration frequently lure the ear away from the assertive piano writing.
The Buchenholz work was a premiere, as was Jonathan Dawe's vigorous "Symphony of Imaginary Numbers" (2008), a score that alternates intriguingly between brass fanfares and thick, assertive string writing.
Over all, the music didn't always serve the story, which would have benefited from more assertive vocal writing and greater harmonic tension.
It has everything: gracefully singing string lines, richly harmonized woodwind choirs, assertive brass writing and plenty of rolling thunder in the percussion.
Mr. Levingston was the agile soloist in Ms. Bielawa's "Rondolette," a quintet for piano and strings that begins with a Mozartean flourish but is quickly transformed into a more modern essay in texture and interplay, with strikingly assertive solo writing for each instrument amid tightly woven ensemble passages.
Her recent music, including "Songs of Ascension," a collaboration with the video artist Ann Hamilton, which opened at the BAM Harvey Theater on Wednesday, sounds nothing like the assertive pieces she wrote and sang in the 1980s.
The article also misattributed a comment in the film, that graffiti writing "has equally assertive counterparts in rap music and break dancing".
Noting that graffiti writing "has equally assertive counterparts in rap music and break dancing," Mr. Chalfant, a sculptor who became entranced by graffiti while standing on subway platforms in the late 1970's, announced the birth of "hip-hop culture" -- positioning paint-sniffing vandals and block party D.J.'s on the same safe, respectable continuum as PBS and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
