Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

Amid a huge expanse of overplayed Mahler this week from Dudamel and the visiting Bolivar Orchestra, there was a moment of beautiful music, simply played and wonderfully effective for it. The program was an evening almost entirely of works from Vivaldi played by Europa Galante under their music director Fabio Biondi and accompanied by the vocally and visually gorgeous Vivica Genaux. The crowd was small even for a Tuesday and paled in comparison to the packed and endlessly enthusiastic audiences Dudamel and his orchestra have played to. Which only goes to show there is no accounting for taste. Genaux and Europa Galante are the real deal, professionals who know without hesitation exactly what they are doing and, despite the smaller scale, they were met with the deserved ardor of the discerning crowd on hand.

Biondi’s players are one of the more polished period-practice ensemble around. Their playing is particularly crisp and never boring. In addition to two Vivaldi concertos they also presented works from Nardini and Locatelli. The Locatelli concerto, subtitled “Il pianto d’Ariana” (The Weeping of Ariadne) in particular benefited from the polished, more lyrical approach. Biondi’s players are quite good in bringing out the sort of thematic and emotional detail that modern audiences tend to gloss over in Baroque works now that their ears have become accustomed to much broader 19th-century dramatics. Of course, the evening rotated around mezzo-soprano Genaux who was as stunning here as she was during her appearances with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra last fall. She has a smaller sized voice that has kept her close to concert halls and smaller European houses for much of her career and she was challenged by the relatively large WDCH space. But unlike some vocalists with similar sized instruments, Genaux has actual Baroque technique to show off and readily manages the floral ornamentation of coloratura passages in such hallmarks as Vivaldi’s “Agitata da due venti.” She could also be heartbreakingly tender as with “E prigioniero e ré” from Semiramide. There are few vocalists that can imbue these Vivaldi arias with the color and pathos Genaux does, and even in this overly large space she was a thriller. Next time around here’s hoping she gets an audience that corresponds more accurately to the size of her talents.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 11/12

After deciding I couldn’t take another Mahler symphony with the Bolivar players under Dudamel this week, I headed over to UCLA instead for a solo piano recital from Denis Matsuev who is currently on a three-city tour of the U.S. that will end in New York on Friday the 27th. Matsuev shot to fame after winning the 1998 International Tchaikovsky Competition and he has continued to perform around the world since then. His name is everywhere lately with a new recording of Liszt's Piano Concerti on RCA and an upcoming performance of the two Shostakovich Piano Conerti with Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra. He’s also scheduled to make an appearance playing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto 3 under Krzysztof Urbański this coming summer at the Hollywood Bowl in what is easily the most exciting program all summer in terms of scheduled performers and repertoire. (Note to Bowl programmers, big classical music stars are most interesting when they are performing something interesting.)

But before all that was this solo recital that had a lot more in common artistically with the kind of approach Dudamel takes to music than you might expect. The show was primarily very familiar piano sonatas: Schubert’s Sonata in A minor, Beethoven’s Sonata No. 23 in F minor, and Grieg’s Sonata in E minor. The show concluded with Stravinsky's Three Movements from the Ballet Petrushka arranged for piano, a work he’ll also perform at the Bowl. Matsuev bounded onto the stage Tuesday and was clearly all business from the get go. He tore into the Schubert making it clear from bar 1 that timidity would not be the order of the day in this performance. The Schubert sounded incredibly broad and magisterial like some sort of music for a regal ceremony. Even in more quiet moments the sound could be on the severe side though never unpleasant. Matsuev was not trying to recast these works as something else, à la Marino Formenti’s take on the Diabelli Variations earlier this year, but was definitely pressing them into a service which called for high drama and big bold sound. The Beethoven gave off a flesh-bound burning passion in this version and the Grieg was no less intense or flashy.

The technique was a thing to behold, and Matsuev is surprisingly fleet given the level of energy and sound he puts out. But perhaps this approach worked best in the arrangement of Stravinsky's Petrushka. Matsuev amazingly made the piano sound like the entire orchestra in this work. It was an entire ballet from a single keyboard, but it worked brilliantly with propulsive motion throughout. Matsuev was swimming in floral bouquets from his many adoring fans in the predominantly Russian-speaking crowd. And while he didn’t make chit-chat or waste time lounging around, he did deliver a number of encores, most notable an unhinged version of Take the "A" Train. Matsuev is known as a jazz aficionado, and the encore was a chance to offer the audience something along the line of his other major performance area. It was an intriguing run through if no less intense than anything else on the evening's bill.

Labels: Denis Matsuev, LA Music Reviews

As much as I love the sound of my own voice, I find that even I can tolerate opinions other than my own once in a while. It’s a sign of good breeding. So following Sunday’s performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, I decided to take a pass on the next couple of collaborations of these particular artistic forces and invited someone else to chip in here at Out West Arts for a change. So, give a big hello to conductor and music critic Matthew Martinez who stepped into the breech for Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 in the current cycle and contributes the following report.

Another opening, another show. So it goes in the jam-packed “Mahler Project.” Less than 48 hours removed from an emotionally exhausting Resurrection Symphony, the 150-plus players of the Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela filled in every suitable inch of the Disney Hall platform to take on Gustav Mahler’s even longer subsequent work, the Third Symphony, for only one performance. Under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel, the players were joined by the Women of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Children’s Chorus and mezzo-soprano soloist Christianne Stotijn. While there were some stunning moments, the performance was often oddly detached, and even academic. Perhaps it was the grueling schedule. In any case, the capacity audience (many of whom felt compelled to clap after each of the first three movements), responded with a loud ovation. Some, however, seemed a bit dazed and were undoubtedly asking, “What was the point?” Unfortunately, this question wasn’t answered on Tuesday night, but some enjoyable moments and beautiful playing offered some glimpses into the majesty of the longest symphony in the repertoire.

After Mahler attempted to answer the questions of death and the after-life in his Second Symphony, he felt compelled to look closer at this life and all that shapes it: nature. In some ways, Mahler’s dramatic strengths are less obvious in this piece than in his other long works. The over-the-top thunderous cries of the Second and Eighth, are replaced by a nobler, more refined language. The constant intrusions by solo instruments can seem devoid of meaning if not given strong purpose. Unfortunately, this was common in the first three movements on Tuesday night. Rather than providing the propulsion for such expansive canvases, they seemed to interrupt rather than motivate. It made for a first movement that sagged and wandered, not due to slowness of tempo, but rather lack of direction and definition. Indeed, the most promising development was a moderation of tempo by the Maestro. There were certainly break-neck accelerandos, but overall, tempos were comfortable and buoyant. Dudamel conducted in a clear pattern and often took on the role of traffic cop, making sure that it was clear where the barlines and entrances were. In a way, this was remarkably refreshing.

Such clarity and moderation brought out the best in the players. The solo flugelhorn sweetly sang from the highest rear balcony in the hall and, while not perfectly in sync with the onstage forces, it was effective. Indeed, there were several fine solos throughout the evening. The first chair trumpet and oboist were exceptionally virtuosic and grand. Mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn’s solo in the fourth movement was effectively sung. Her tender tone filled the hall and, while not particularly rich, was satisfying in its authority. The Los Angeles Children’s Chorus sang skillfully, but with a slightly thin tone as their boy-sopranos were significantly outnumbered. The Women of the Los Angeles Master Chorale were exemplary as usual, singing with an appreciated dramatic playfulness of text that played well off of Stotijn’s lines. The finest moment of the night belonged to the Venezuelans, however, as Dudamel led a masterful beginning to the final movement, Langsam. The tempo was appropriately slow, but pulsed with a constant vitality. The playing was controlled, beautiful, and blossomed with a sustained energy that spoke naturally without artifice. It was one of the few extended passages where Mahler ascended with purpose. The music soared because it had to. While they were not quite able to sustain it for the final thirty minutes, it was still affirming. For Dudamel and the Venezuelans, it was an admirable step in the right direction.

— Matthew Martinez

Labels: LA Philharmonic 11/12

Remember the “Recovered Voices” project? It was the initiative spearheaded by Los Angeles Opera and music director James Conlon to present some of the music composed by artists adversely affected by Germany’s Third Reich and largely neglected in the history of 20th-century music. L.A. Opera kicked off the series with a concert in 2007 followed by full productions of Zemlinsy’s Der Zwerg, Braunfel’s Die Vögel, and Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten over the next few seasons. Unfortunately the state of the economy and the company’s budget have precluded any more fully stage productions along these lines since 2010. But neither the spirit nor the music itself has been forgotten, as evidenced by James Conlon’s appearance last weekend conducting members of The Colburn School Orchestra and L.A. Opera’s Domingo-Thornton Young Artists in a double bill of one act opera’s by two of those same composers featured in the “Recovered Voices” series.

The concert took place in Colburn’s Zipper Hall and while this may not have allowed for the largest space for these semi-staged productions, it was ideal considering the musical resources. The vocalists easily projected in the space over the chamber-sized orchestra without strain showing off their best attributes and allowing for some pointed and memorable performances. First on the bill was Ernst Krenek’s The Secret Kingdom. Krenek’s career covered a lot of 20th-century musical ground including the jazz-influenced 1926 opera Jonny spielt auf. The Secret Kingdom is more clearly situated in the dying days of late Romanticism with nods to the Second Viennese School. It also owes a lot at least thematically to Wagner. The story, which starts with narration from the court’s jester, tells of an unpopular king among his subjects and even his queen. The queen enlists her three ladies-in-waiting to cajole and seduce the king's jester into giving up the crown he is holding for the king in a clever reverse of the opening of Das Rheingold. She in turn attempts to use the crown to seduce a rebel leader with the promise of power and her affection but to no avail. The royals all escape the rebels and enter the forest where the queen turns into a tree. After the king contemplates suicide, the queen’s voice comforts him and the Jester returns the crown bringing the show to an end.

This sort of fairy tale material lends itself to any number of sociopolitical interpretations in its historical context. Director Gulu Monteiro and designer Swinda Reichelt, who contributed to both stagings, used the space and resources at hand to evoke German expressionism without overplaying either the political allusions or fantastic aspects of the story. Domingo-Thornton alumnus Daniel Armstrong sang the role of the jester and sunk his teeth into the playfulness of the part interacting with the audience. Baritone Museop Kim was the heartbroken king and he produced a warm even sound in his scenes with guest artist Stacey Tappan who was both commanding and lovely as a queen. Tappan has had a number of notable roles in California recently including singing roles in San Francisco’s recent Ring cycle such as Siegfried’s Woodbird. Her tree evoked Strauss’ Daphne for obvious reasons and her performance made me look forward to hearing her in bigger roles. The three Ladies in Waiting were Valentina Fleer, Renée Rapier and Tracy Cox who all performed with voices lovely enough to evoke the unavoidable allusions to Rheinmaidens.

The second half of the program was a reprisal of Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis, a piece written in Theresienstadt and a favorite of Conlon’s. He performed it in Los Angeles at the Wilshire Temple in 2004 with members of the LA. Philharmonic, and this staging rivaled the quality of that previous one. This war time allegory about death taking a holiday and refusing to end anyone’s life despite the king’s request he do so as part of an ongoing war campaign is dark, sardonic material. The sweet and brightly voiced Ben Bliss played Harlequin, the character who represents life and debates Death’s decision to renounce his usual duties. Bass Erik Anstine made for an ironic and rather comical death figure. Renée Rapier returned as the drummer-girl in her Weil-inspired stage presence. But perhaps most engaging was the lovely lyric duet performed by Alexey Sayapin and Janai Brugger who performed as a soldier and Bubikopf, combatants who become lovers in the absence of death. Perhaps most satisfying, though, was the robust and sizable performance given by the Colburn players, which sounded much bigger than their number might suggest on the stage. This is music with lots of rapid stylistic changes and can move between tense and gently lyrical with little notice. It made for a lovely afternoon and a promising showcase for some of the company's youngest talents.

Labels: LA Opera 11/12

On Sunday the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela joined Gustavo Dudamel on the stage of the Walt Disney Concert Hall for their first appearance as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s ongoing Mahler Cycle. It’s the orchestra’s first appearance here since 2007 when they performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 under Dudamel with pretty dicey results. Now they are back without the “Youth” in their name anymore, the orchestra is still composed of players aged 18-28, and a lot more Mahler under their belts in all sorts of international venues. They played Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 on Sunday, a work they played during last year’s BBC Proms to very mixed reviews. It’s been very popular for people who write music criticism to write about the SBSOV players as having special insight into this work. The idea being that a resurrection after death is somehow akin to the “El Sistema” backstory that has been a cornerstone of the publicity around the orchestra. Western art music saves the poor children of South America just as faith and religion promise life beyond earthly suffering. As to whether or not any of the orchestra’s players relate to such a proposition, I wouldn’t know. But clearly there are audiences around the world who find the idea alluring. Of course, you could also just see it as a bunch of 20-year-olds sharing their take on one of the great works about death and the afterlife.

In either event, the excesses that plague Dudamel’s conducting were back to the fore on Sunday with an orchestra apparently much less inclined to moderate them. How so much energy and emotional playing can result in music so empty of dramatic tension is a mystery to me. There are some admirable moments. Dudamel got a wonderful performance from the Los Angeles Master Chorale alongside soloists Christianne Stotijn and Miah Persson in the finale of the evening. But this moment like so many others felt disconnected from the whole. Dudamel continues to get bogged down with over-slow pacing, particularly in the second movement, and allows passages to too easily separate from one another. The motion grinds to a dead stop over and over, dissipating the overall effect and dramatic line again and again. Now it should be said that Mahler was not against excesses on the whole. He certainly called for as many strings as possible, and with the SBSOV that is what you get to the point that during the performance a bass player lost his instrument’s footing near the edge of the very cramped stage. But having a lot of players, and controlling their sound are two very different issues and many of the biggest moments from the orchestra sounded sloppy and unfocused more due to the sheer number of players than anything else.

But even in L.A. size matters and the big finish got the enthusiastic response it commanded with a big ovation stretching on and on for many minutes. As throughout their entire history both live and on stage, the quality of the actual performances of the SBSOV under Dudamel rarely correlate to the crowds response. The relationship seems to be based more on energy and enthusiasm. The more dramatic and overstated the performance, the more dramatic and overstated the response. But things work like this in the modern world more and more; why should classical music be any different?

Labels: LA Philharmonic 11/12

The growth of Santa Monica’s ambitious Jacaranda Music series in just over four years of existence has been staggering. The series, under the direction of Patrick Scott and Mark Alan Hilt, has become a major player in presenting 20th- and 21st-century art music in L.A., and if there was any question still remaining about that fact, all one had to do was look around the room at the faces in the nearly capacity crowd at Santa Monica’s First Presbyterian Church this past Saturday night. (One wonders how much longer they'll be able to continue in this space given the ever increasing size of their audiences.) In addition to the concert, entitled “Ring Around the Moon,” the evening also marked the annual awarding of the group’s Forte Awards honoring individuals who have championed 20th-century music in L.A. Both of this year’s recipients, violinist Movses Pogossian and L.A. Philharmonic president Deborah Borda, were in attendance Saturday, a testament to Jacaranda’s reach and importance in the music community here.

Of course, all this seems obvious considering the quality and content of the show performed that evening, which lived up to the series’ high standards. The pieces all spoke to a nocturnal world and one often marked with a certain spirituality. It was music for the darkest days of the year with a cold and sometimes sparse beauty. Kaija Saariaho’s trio for piano, cello, and viola Je sens un deuxieme coeur started things off. These brief five movements grew out of Saariaho’s 2006 opera Adriana Mater and play with the idea of independent organic rhythms tied together such as the baby's heartbeat in a pregnant woman - a theme central to the opera. The trio was well played by Gloria Cheng and two members of the Calder Quartet, Jonathan Moerschel and Eric Byers, which set the tone for this sometimes quiet and introspective evening. This was quickly followed by a solo guitar work, All in Twilight by Toru Takemitsu played by Michael Kudirka. As with many of Takemitsu’s works, silence and space plays as big a role in the music here as the actual sound. Wrapping up the first half was Dutilleux’ Ainsi la Nuit performed by the Lyris Quartet. These twelve short movements gave off exactly the kind of glow that one might associate with the moon and I was just as impressed with the Lyris players here as I was when they played David Lang’s Difficulty of Crossing a Field for Long Beach Opera last year.

But all of this sparse nighttime music led to something a bit more unexpected: Chinary Ung’s 2006 work for small ensemble and two sopranos, Aura, conducted by Hilt. The nearly hour long piece is filled with Asian elements, some from Ung’s own birthplace of Cambodia. The six string players, three winds, two percussionists, and vocalists were all given double duty on both their own instruments as well as cymbals, water glasses, or at the very least vocalization of sounds more akin to chanting than singing. While some of the text used Khmer and Pali words, much of it did not, heightening the sense of ritual performance in the piece. Sopranos Elissa Johnston and Kathleen Roland were both provided lovely bright vocal sound on top of an often surprisingly large output from the small orchestra, expressing the sense of these various untranslated words. The sound spun outward in a consistent and somewhat meditative way that slowly swept you into it. It’s one of those pieces where by the end you feel you’ve gotten somewhere even if your not exactly sure how you got there. It’s what my friend Robert described as what Mahler imagined himself to be writing with Das Lied von der Erde. And there’s truth to that, if at least in the work's format, though there is something about Aura that while not unaware of death, seems less completely transfixed by it. It received the biggest and most enthusiastic response of the evening and it certainly felt much larger than the resources used in its production would imply. But this may be the story of Jacaranda as well, and the work suited the evening. Out of love for 20th- and 21st-century music and the ambition to martial available resources, a hugely successful concert series has thrived by the sea featuring music that often goes looking for a home.

Labels: Jacaranda

The more things change, the more they stay the same. On Thursday, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and music director Gustavo Dudamel continued their Mahler cycle (or “Project” if you’re prone to marketing jargon) by covering familiar territory. The main course on the program was Mahler’s Symphony No.1, a favorite of Dudamel’s. Ironically, though, it’s not a work that he’s conducted particularly well in its previous outings here at least. Most notably was the symphony on the bill for the gala opening performance of his tenure as music director in Los Angeles, which was preserved on video. As you may recall, it was artistically disastrous, though the PR machine built up around him bowled over any objections from those who were really listening. Two years later the prospect of its return was not inspiring.

But two years is a long time, and Dudamel’s work with the orchestra has clearly started to pay off as evidenced by what was heard on Thursday. It’s by no means a deep or mature interpretation, but it was undoubtedly a reasonable and at turns quite reasonable one. Many of the same mannerisms are still present – the exaggerated tempi, the obsessive focus on maximizing every little detail at the expense of the whole, and so on. Again the first two movements bogged down occasionally over this preoccupation. But these issues were far less pronounced and the sense of motion through the piece was more intact. Of course, many of those small moments sounded wonderful and the third movement came off without any drag. Dudamel can always sell the big finish, and the finale was as heroic as you could wish for.

As the conductor himself noted, this is usually the point at which the concert would end. (And in fact did so during the inexplicably popular “Casual Friday” performance where you pay the same ticket price for less music with a side of chat, but go figure.) But as Dudamel told the audience before leaving the stage, there was more to come in the form of the Adagio from the unfinished Symphony No. 10, the final symphonic piece Mahler completed before his death. This was provided for contrast with Mahler’s earliest symphonic work, and while the idea may have been a little obvious, the execution was something else entirely. The increasingly lush strings of the L.A. Philharmonic poured themselves into this performance with Dudamel delivering what he had promised – a movement that connected Mahler to the musical revolutions of the 20th Century. Here the Wagnerian overtones were crystal clear and the second Viennese school was clearly in sight with a sound bordering on the dissonant and reorganized. The youthful excesses of both the music and the conducting of the first were gone and replaced with something far more cohesive and impressive. I’ll take more of this Dudamel, please. All this raises expectations for the later symphonies Dudamel will conduct with the L.A. Phil including the 6th next weekend and the 9th after that. You’ve got one more chance to hear this tidbit tonight before the Bolivar players take over the show with the 2nd on Sunday.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 11/12

David Cromer’s much lauded production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town made it to Los Angeles this week. It’s landed at The Broad Stage, a venue that is quickly developing an incredible track record for bringing the best in theater to Los Angeles. I’m happy to report that Our Town is another chapter in that growing, remarkable history. The production dates back to 2008 where it originated under the auspices of Chicago’s The Hypocrites and a successful long run in New York followed. (In fact it was the longest New York of run of the play ever since its premiere in 1938.) Director David Cromer and many of the original cast have followed the show West along with Helen Hunt who plays the role of the stage manager as she had during a later part of the New York run. And what’s arrived at The Broad is sensational and profoundly moving.

Wilder’s tale of everyday American lives in the early 20th Century was marked from its premiere with a stark, unusually barren staging – an artifice used to strip away what he saw as alienating pretenses of the stage including elaborate sets and costumes. Cromer follows Wilder’s stage directions to this extent with his actors pantomiming activities like cooking and cleaning. But Cromer uses other devices to brilliantly strip away the veneer of nostalgia associated with Our Town exposing the dark and blistering heart of the show. The stage of The Broad auditorium has been extended out over the entire seating area with the audience sitting on risers atop the expanded space in a U-shaped area. The narrow central corridor contains two tables with four chairs each and large walkways lie directly behind the first row of seating. All of this space is used by the cast completely integrating the audience into the day-to-day life of Grover’s Corners. The town’s children run down these aisles and Hunt is as likely to be sitting next to you as addressing you from the stage. Cromer goes further, though, dressing the cast in contemporary street clothes and playing down New England accents and overly expressive affect.

This all adds up to a certain darkness that sets in from the moment things begin, and suddenly the whole show is imbued by an awareness of human frailty and transience. This is not about longing for the past, but the exact opposite. The Our Town stands and screams with rage over our inability to live in the beauty of the moment which comes home to roost in a powerful third act. Cromer closes the show with a brilliant coup de théatre that I won’t describe here, but suffice it to say the audience was filled with sobbing patrons and I’m not ashamed to say I was among them. What’s more, not only has Cromer managed to expose the raw, painful crux of the play, but he’s done so in a way that feels contemporary. Despite its setting of events from over a century ago, this production of Our Town struck me as urgent a show as Next to Normal with modern day American families going about their lives. This is a not a gauzy John Ford version of the past but a dangerous, beautiful throbbing 'now' to be contended with. There is an excellent cast, not only including a superbly subtle Hunt, but James McMenamin as a heartbreaking George and Jennifer Grace as an Emily nearly bursting with youth. But all in the ensemble are quite good and there wasn’t a single moment in the calm, well-paced show that wasn’t worth savoring. I can’t say enough good things about the show. You should see it if you haven’t already before it’s gone on Feb 12.

Labels: Broad Stage 11/12

Recently, a mini-debate fired up over at the esteemable Lisa Hirsch’s Iron Tongue of Midnight about the widely varying published opinions on Susan Graham’s recent recital appearance in Berkeley. Lisa, Joshua Kosman, John Marcher and others all had weighed in on relative strengths and weaknesses of the show, part of her current U.S. tour, which will soon reach Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. But lucky for the debaters (and you dear reader), Ms. Graham and her accompanist Malcolm Martineau graced the brand new (and as of yet neither donor nor major corporation monikered) Valley Performing Arts Center on the campus of CSUN, on Wednesday, allowing me to clarify things for them by providing the correct opinions about the evening. So let the healing begin…

To start with, Graham arrived in full-on mid-Century Hollywood glamour mode in a floor length plain white gown with plunging neckline and sparkly jewelry to match. I don’t know if Fred Leighton loans out to opera recitals, but they really ought to seize the kind of moment Ms. Graham could deliver. Overall, she was in splendid voice for the evening. She was certainly stronger and more assured than I recall in her last few fully-staged appearances (the Met’s last run of Iphigénie en Tauride and SFO’s revival of Xerxes). To be fair, in Northridge she wasn’t bothered with some overbearing and dull stage-direction to work around and she bloomed when left to her own devices dramatically. Someone should really be mounting more new productions for her.

The program started by playing to her strong suits with Purcell’s “The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation” and Berlioz’ La Mort d’Ophélie. Her voice still holds up amazingly well in Baroque material and she delivered moments of Biblical warmth and clarity in both pieces. Her French is always flawless and she is a natural for Berlioz as well. These were followed by a collection of six different songs from as may different composers setting poetic scenes from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister. Most interesting were three different settings of “Kennst du das Land wo die Zitronen blüh'n” the first from Liszt that occurred half was through the set, a more comic twist from Duparc, and finally a strikingly more brutal and organic version from Hugo Wolf that demonstrated exactly what a difference a Wagner makes. Graham’s forceful cries of “Dahin!” in the final stanza were absolutely chilling.

Upon returning from the break, Graham switched gears by singing about “bad girls” in contrast to the romantic heroines of the first half as she announced from the stage. Now in black sequins and red lights, she sunk her teeth into some very different material. Sadly, some of this material let her down. First was Joseph Horovitz’s 1970 setting of Lady Macbeth’s dialog in a dramatic scene, Lady Macbeth. This came off as more recitative than actual music and was hugely disappointing in its lack of musical color. Also how these disembodied passages build on one another wasn’t clear. Graham made the most of it with her expressive acting, but there was so little musical meat on the bone everyone was soon starving. Poulenc’s witty Fiançailles pour rire came afterward and was delivered with a knowing smile and more lovely vocalism. Graham concluded the evening with a series of “bad girl” songs from Cole Porter and Sondheim including Ben Moore’s now familiar composition for her “Sexy Lady,” which lampoons her own image and place as a mezzo-soprano in the opera world. These songs do show off Graham’s incredible winning personality – one of the reasons that fans like me love her. But to be honest, even by conventional recital standards these days, it felt like rather a soft landing given how good the material in the first half of the evening sounded. There’s letting your hair down, and then there’s putting it up in curlers if you get my drift. Still I’d be thrilled to see her name on a season announcement for L.A. Opera or really anything out here in California, and this recital reminded me why that is.

Labels: Susan Graham, Valley Performing Arts Center

Somewhere along the line Steve Reich became a rockstar. It looked that way on Tuesday night when he appeared in Los Angeles alongside the Bang on a Can All-Stars and red fish blue fish at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in a program dedicated entirely to his music. The hall was packed with the biggest crowd I’ve yet seen for one of the L.A. Philharmonic-sponsored Green Umbrella programs dedicated to new(ish) music. And there was an almost party-like atmosphere in the audience filled with young faces and large clusters of people hugging as if they were old friends. Just about everybody who follows classical and/or new music in town was there, and even music director Gustavo Dudamel showed up casually dressed in a polo shirt for part of the evening along with Lionel Bringuier. The evening was a tribute to one of the lions of American music and everyone wanted to be a part of it.

Even Reich himself got into the evening by performing as one of the two hand-clapping parts in 1972’s Clapping Music. The other part was performed by percussionist David Cossin who followed this brief rhythmic introduction with a 2000 work Video Phase. Like Clapping Music, this second work was about variations in rhythmic patters at its most basic and unadorned. In Video Phase, a version of an earlier work for two pianos, Cossin filmed himself playing MIDI percussion pads programmed to reproduce piano sounds in a strict repeating rhythm. The film was played back in live performance with Cossin then playing the same pads in a second part where the original rhythm is repeated and periodically sped up enough to move it slightly out of phase from the original. This process is repeated several times until both tape and live performance are back in sequence. Undoubtedly both of these works, like so much of Reich’s music on the whole, are remarkable for the amount of physical endurance and dexterity they require from the musicians. There is a type of mathematical beauty to them that can’t be overlooked. But both also feel like tricks or high school science experiments at time as well.

The rest of the evening was filled with larger scale works. The evening was anchored with Reich’s masterpiece, Music for 18 Musicians with its complex slowly shifting rhythmic patterns that are spread out between several percussionists, at least 4 pianists and just a few winds and strings. A very similar structure is used in Reich’s 2009 composition 2x5, which was receiving its West Coast premiere that evening. 2x5 is scored for two sets of a five member “band” consisting of a pianist, drummer, and three electric guitar players. The allusion here is to contemporary rock music, although the process of Reich’s shifting rhythmic patterns remains the same moving back and forth between the two ensembles set to mirror one another on stage. 2x5 struck me as a rather sly composition with its popular music references, but both of these later works still carried Reich’s hallmark ebullience. The meditative, Eastern overtones to his work fuse with a distinctly American sound. It was again exceedingly well played by these specialist ensembles, many of whose players know Reich’s music more than just about anybody.

It’s a good vibe, but admittedly for me, it can grow to be a somewhat hollow one. The constant often uncontested optimism in the pieces can create a certain “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind” if you will. Which does have a Zen ring to it, doesn’t it. Reich's music always works best when one can let go and connect with the deeper meditative aspects of it. Perhaps what it cries out for is more of a direct attachment to the natural world. This performance made me harken back to the last time I heard Music for 18 Musicians at the Ojai festival in 2009. There was something about the contrast between the exacting playing of the music outdoors mixed with the sounds of wind through the trees and birds singing that set the whole thing alight in a way I missed indoors. But the surroundings made little difference for Tuesday's enthusiastic crowd who were there to celebrate music they loved and had connected with. And that makes for an exciting evening in and of itself.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 11/12

I forgot my coat. It’s something you don’t think you’ll need often in L.A., even in January, but it was a particularly cold Monday. Of course in L.A. you also don’t expect you’ll be watching a string quartet in the expanded picture window of an Alvarado storefront just north of Sunset Blvd open to the street with midday traffic rushing by. But we’re Angelenos, and we roll with it. Where I had rolled earlier this week was the heart of Los Angeles’ latest, greatest blossoming modern, art music scene. In the last few years, an expanding network of artists and musicians with ties not only through CalArts but through the ethereal world of Twitter and other social media have been making increasingly important music, and doing it their own way, on their own terms. And on this particularly cold January day, they were making it that way in Echo Park.


The occasion was the launch of the first release from L.A.’s newest record label, populist records. (A superbly ironic name for a contemporary art music outfit.) The label is the brain child of internet-savvy violinist Andrew Tholl and violist Andrew McIntosh who explained that they had created the label as an outlet for Southern California composers to get their work recorded by a home-grown label while providing local artists a chance to perform music they wanted to play. The first recording Nicholas Deyoe – with throbbing eyes provides a survey of Deyoe's work for small ensembles including songs written for soprano Stephanie Aston and two string quartets played by the formalist quartet - Tholl and McIntosh’s quartet alongside violinist Mark Menzies and cellist Ashley Walters. In March, populist will release McIntosh’s recording of solo works from American minimalist composer Tom Johnson. (The sample below features the formalists playing Deyoe's Images from a sleepless night from the new release.)

And while self-publishing music isn’t new, populist records represent a further step in the development of a musical and artistic community in Los Angeles that is beginning to command attention for its breadth, excitement, and sheer energy of production and performance. The launch event was held at Machine Project, a Los Angeles arts collective in Echo Park that hosts and promotes a wide variety of events. Machine Project has worked closely for several years with sound artist/composer/trumpeter Chris Kallmyer who in turn, along with McIntosh, Tholl, and others, performs as part of L.A.’s new music chamber orchestra, wild Up. Kallmyer, whose own work has been seen at the Getty Museum and other major art institutions, helped arrange the event at Machine Project where cupcakes and beer were paired with performances from the formalists as well as Deyoe’s solo pieces for cello. Deyoe himself played electric guitar augmented with an empty aluminum can, a favorite implement in recent guitar-based compositions. The crowd gathered at the front of the space and on the street looking into the store like displaced shoppers in an arctic L.A. mall.


The sense of possibility was palpable as Tholl and McIntosh spoke of future plans for recordings from wild Up and other outfits in the area while the crowd filled with other familiar faces from the local art music scene, knit more closely together through an active online community. Composer Isaac Schankler, whose People Inside Electronics will produce their latest show on Feb 11 funded in part from an indiegogo campaign, was in attendance. Schankler is curating another evening at Machine Project on Jan 29, "Bandwagon! (a combine)", with all sorts of machines, musical and otherwise. All of this, of course, took place just two days after the last wild Up performance in Pasadena last weekend where artistic director Christopher Rountree helped put the final touches on wild Up's Kickstarter project to fund and press vinyl copies of their performance of the Shostakovich Chamber Symphony. The group has already surpassed its fundraising goal and is discussing plans to make a recording of last weekend’s concert available. To boot, Rountree will make an appearance on APM's Performance Today on the 19th to talk about the project. And the performance schedule of both wild Up and the formalist quartet is filled with appearances over the next several months, which, if their track record to date is any indication, will be superlative events.

Increasingly, and egged on by an active online community that has created connections in ways that may not have existed before, there is a new and expanding community of young musicians and composers across the city making exciting music they want to hear and play. The folks I've discussed here aren't the only ones, but they are creating a music scene in a way and with technology that hadn't existed before. They are intent on producing their own sounds in collaboration with one another without waiting for someone to come and discover them. And that is a great day for new music in L.A. Even if it happens in the most unusual spaces, on the most unusually cold days in our typically sunny, warm city.

Labels: LA new music, wildup

Now in their sixth year, Los Angeles’ Porters of Hellsgate Theater Company has had a near religious devotion to the works of Shakespeare. This very young company, both in terms of the organization’s age as well as that of many of its resident artists, has touched on most of the major comedies and dramas and has kicked off this year with the famously thorny and relatively infrequently performed Troilus and Cressida. The thorniness comes from a text filled with often incongruent broad comedy and far weightier material about the transience of love, peace, and other aspects of the human condition. Not that Shakespeare didn’t balance these themes well in most of his plays, but here the combination can seem off. The lovers in the title, Trojans both, have relatively less stage time than the ongoing machinations and complications in the long standing war with the Greeks that’s going on around them. Hector’s battles with the likes of Ajax, Achilles, and Agamemnon and the debate over the merits of their conflict and the moral laws that define it take up far more territory. It’s interesting and surprisingly contemporary material, but Shakespeare has placed it in a rather cumbersome package.

The Porters’ Artistic Director, Charles Pasternak, who helmed this production, decides to go with the stronger cards the author has dealt him by emphasizing a particularly testosterone driven tale of war. The warring Trojans and Greeks posture and shout. And everything is wrapped up with an underlining gesture to make it clear this is first and foremost a play about the tragedy of war and moral ambivalence that it can spring from. Romance and heartbreak, though present, are given a back seat and the comedy is whittled down to something a little bleaker. The fool Thersites, played by Gus Krieger, spends most of the play in a leather half-mask strapped to his head which makes much of his dialog a bit more creepy than outright funny. The fight scenes between the young handsome actors playing the soldiers were some of the more convincing I’ve seen in this size of a production with Matt Calloway’s Achilles and Napoleon Tavale’s Hector bouncing off of the walls during their hand-to-hand combat. In this case, having a young and particularly attractive, athletic cast overall paid off in terms of physicality.

And despite some odd choices, like a mincing, effeminate Pandarus and a just two notches over the top Ajax, the show as a whole works well, maintaining focus and smooth pacing. And there were a number of very engaging performances as well, in particular from Thomas Bigley as Ulysses whose portrayal of the thinking and strategizing Greek warrior quickly became the centerpiece of the whole evening. He commanded attention through voice and manner in a show where action was more typically the order of the day. I was also taken with the space that many of the women in the cast managed to carve out in the show even when they frequently are put in the position of reflecting on the horrors of their men’s war. Taylor Fisher’s Cressida was sensible and believable, and Eliza Kiss’s Helen, who also served prominently in both the Prologue and Epilogue, was memorable. Does the Porters’ production milk everything it can out of Shakespeare’s play? Probably not, but then never being able to do so is part of the glory of Shakespeare. Pasternak and his fellow Porters deliver a solid, watchable, and compelling war story with Troilus and Cressida that deserves to be seen by a wide audience. It runs in the valley through February 19.

Labels: LA Theater Reviews, Porters of Hellsgate