A HIGH-INTENSITY work for tenor and chamber orchestra was given its first New York performance in Merkin Concert Hall on Wednesday night by Music Today, the modern-music group led by Gerard Schwarz. Entitled ''Into Eclipse,'' the half-hour song cycle is by Stephen Albert, a New York-born composer who in his early 40's.
Mr. Albert is able to generate viable musical ideas with ease. Furthermore, his ear for arresting instrumental sonorities is remarkable and, in fact, has given ''Into Eclipse'' its most striking aspect.
The poetry of the five-song cycle is drawn from an adaptation by Ted Hughes of Seneca's ''Oedipus.'' Unfortunately, the composer indulges in rather more word repetition than is usually thought desirable nowadays, and his prosody could be better, but the creation of an atmosphere of terror may have been his major aim, and in that he succeeded.
That the work made a searing impact was due in no small measure to the tenor David Gordon, who maintained dramatic intensity from the outset of the work while imbuing the vocal lines with telling expressive inflection.
There were three other highly contrasted works in the program - Varése's ''Integrales,'' Etler's Clarinet Concerto (with David Shifrin as soloist) and Joan Tower's ''Black Topaz'' (with John Van Buskirk as piano soloist). All were performed persuasively, and ''Black Topaz'' was especially appealing.