Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

Los Angeles loves pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque. Or at least Los Angeles Philharmonic audiences do. They’re fixtures with the orchestra in both new repertory and old and have made three appearances with the orchestra already this year alone. In April they played Stravinsky under Thomas Adès and in September gave a lovely performance of Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Piano’s under Juanjo Mena. Now it’s November and the sisters returned with a world premiere and new commission from Swiss composer Richard Dubugnon. The Labèques have had major successes with new compositions here before, including Louis Andriessen’s double piano concerto, The Hague Hacking, which they played in 2009 with then music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen. This time around the L.A. Philharmonic's music director was nowhere to be found for the premiere, which was instead trusted to visiting conductor Semyon Bychkov. Dubugnon’s double piano concerto was inspired by the 15th-century Battle of San Romano as depicted by Paolo Uccelo (The second of the three paintings in this set is shown above). Of course one of the most omnipresent metaphors for concertos in general is the struggle between orchestra and soloist regardless of the instruments in question, so the inspiration of Medieval warfare wouldn’t seem too out of place. But Dubugnon has a number of layers and twists on the typical musical struggles. Rather than place soloists and orchestra on opposite sides of the struggle, he divides the players along other arbitrary lines. This “Battlefield” concerto pits the two pianos against one another each with their own contingent of orchestra players who are physically divided into two camps on stage as well.

The music moves through several uninterrupted movements representing stages of the conflict from a call to arms to a Funeral and Triumphant March. There are two off-stage trumpets that call players to the fray periodically on either side. Dubugnon notes that part of the musical inspiration for the piece was to avoid what he saw as the historic tendency to have both soloists in double concertos play more or less complementary parts often making it difficult to separate out the two instruments. Here the Labèques parried and thrusted back and fort throughout the length of the work. And while they did not play in unison, it is probably more accurate to say that their passages tended to mirror one another in terms of both musical tone and structure. These were solo parts that were not at all oblivious to one another, but engaged in an intimate if purportedly combative embrace. All this being said, I can’t say I was overwhelmed by the piece. There were some big dramatic moments, but the content overall seemed programmatic and didactic in the least interesting way. And despite the shifts in the battle, things tended not to vary much from section to section creating more of an exhausted sensation than a cathartic one at the end. Still, the work was more compelling than Enrico Chapela's recent concerto for electric cello, MAGNETAR, which premiered here several weeks ago. Dubugnon largely avoids the kind of endless references to popular music genres that are the hallmark of so much contemporary classical composition these days. There is an electric bass used intermittently in the "Battlefield" concerto and a few rhythmic touches here and there, but not the wholesale incorporation of jazz and blues riffs heard in recent works here by the likes of Chapela and John Adams.

Dubugnon’s concerto was paired with two quintessential Romantic pieces. First was Ravel’s Rhapsodie espagnole in the two piano version. The Labèques excel with this kind of material and the detailed wash of the sound was beautiful. After the intermission and the concerto was Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. Bychkov led a warm and adequately muscular performance from the orchestra. The strings sounded great with the bigger, more robust sound they’ve developed over the last couple of seasons. This is not the most compelling music, however. The good news is that it is not Rachmaninoff’s piano music. But the Symphonic Dances especially when held up against the work of Ravel, can sound under-orchestrated and surprisingly banal. But Bychkov and the orchestra gave a top-drawer take on what there was to play. Which I suppose was a nice break after all the musical conflict that preceded it. The show repeats Saturday and Sunday.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 11/12