Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

Classical music at the bowl never benefits from subtlety. The world-class acoustics of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s home at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the orchestra’s summer digs in the hollow sounding amplified space of the Hollywood Bowl are two worlds that couldn’t be farther apart. Delicacy has no place at the Bowl where it is crushed by any number of natural phenomena including some of the world’s noisiest audiences. So programming for the big and bold when it comes to sound is never a bad idea, and Tuesday’s program was big, Russian, and oversized in about every sense. This was largely due to the presence of pianist Denis Matsuev, the 1998 Tchaikovsky competition winner, who brought his big, oversized playing to the right place at the right time with the L.A. Phil and conductor Krzysztof Urbanski this week. Matsuev comes off as a modern day Liszt figure. He does much more than concertize with the biggest and best, exploring corners familiar and not of the piano repertoire. He has a taste for jazz, improvisation, and piano transcriptions of both operatic and orchestral works. It's showy and plainly highlights his virtuosity in crowd pleasing ways. But he also projects a seriousness on the stage, jumping into performance quickly with great energy and no hesitation. All of these penchants were on display when he kicked off Tuesday night with Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1. This was meaty playing that was fast, furious, and demanding of attention. It felt impetuous like the composition of a young man that it is. Matsuev milked the rhythmic elements and Urbanski and the orchestra met him punch for punch like some highly coordinated drill team and less like an ongoing battle. It was thrilling from beginning to end in the most visceral sense.

Matsuev flew off after the concerto and came back on the stage for solo piano transcriptions from Stravinsky’s Petrushka and with an encore of “Largo al factotum” from Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Again, this was not subtle playing and certainly never wistful or tongue-in-cheek. But the sheer brute strength of it all worked well. The Petrushka often sounded like the full orchestra was playing as Matsuev’s hands flew across the keyboard digging in with seriousness even in the lightest flourishes. It was dramatic and exciting playing that filled the giant space around it and left a highly enthusiastic crowd.

The Shostakovich that closed the program, Symphony No. 10, couldn’t have provided a bigger and less successful contrast. The darkest and quietest of Shostakovich’s symphonies is often thorny in its misery. The music crumbles easily and maintaining a decisive thread throughout requires masterful skill. There are some superlative solo passages, which thrive on fine detail from clarinets and horns among others. Urbanski, the young rising Polish conductor, managed to give those solo moments room to breathe, but the opening Moderato sounded wooden, and moments of insight and excitement were too easily followed by playing that was decidedly less focused. Of course, the acoustics didn’t help either, and Urbanski’s interest in detail could get lost in the amplification. Shostakovich’s music often overwhelms, especially those who perform it and this particular performance felt a little too cold to engage the crowd after a decidedly more fierce opening segment. Here’s hoping both Urbanski and Matsuev haven’t made their last appearances in L.A., though. There was much more promise to be excited about than disappointment in the evening’s offing.

Labels: Hollywood Bowl 12

The always sluggish Hollywood Bowl summer season for the Los Angeles Philharmonic perked up a bit on Sunday. Actually it would be more accurate to say it bolted awake suddenly with a show likely to be the high-water mark of the whole summer. It was the annual one-off opera performance in concert version that has been a staple of Hollywood Bowl seasons for years now. L.A. Philharmonic Music Director has continued his close involvement with the event this time around in his ongoing efforts to take a first crack at conducting operas in the standard repertoire, virtually none of which he had much experience with prior to coming to L.A. Local audiences continue to be the test subjects for his first forays into the field, but on Sunday they got a winner when Dudamel led the orchestra and a great vocal cast in Verdi’s Rigoletto in what was easily the best opera performance given at the Bowl in years.

What worked? First and foremost the company brought in the world’s leading proponent of the title role, baritone Željko Lucic. He’ll be singing the same role in San Francisco later this Fall and will headline the Metropolitan Opera’s new staging a bit later on as well. Luckily, L.A. got to see him if only for one night, and he is amazing in this part. Big and rich sounding, he readily taps into Rigoletto’s paranoia and tragic conflict as both purveyor and victim of the excesses of the Duke's court. Lucic's Act II performance alone was stirring at depths not too many of his competition can come close to. At times he sounded as if the patchy Bowl amplification system was unnecessary and that he could fill all the outdoors with his big assured sound. And this time around, the L.A. Phil assembled a supporting cast that was equally strong. Russian soprano Irina Lungu whose worked extensively in Italy including at La Scala sang Gilda and had firm hold of the coloratura elements in the part maintaining strength throughout her range. The duets with Lucic were masterful and a pure joy to hear. The young tenor David Lomeli sang the Duke of Mantua with athleticism and easy clear top notes. He’s going places to be sure and even against these very experienced and polished cast members, he sounded like a world-class tenor. (He’ll be travelling to San Francisco with this role as well in the fall.)

There are still glitches. Why the L.A. Philharmonic insists on the mostly unreadable design of their supertitles for the large Bowl monitors year after year is a wonder. The white lettering of the titles vanishes even when it’s dark enough to see them against the white jackets of the performers. The transparent background for the titles at the bottom of these screens hasn’t worked for years and isn’t about to start now. It’s a shame that the organization can’t seem to address this most basic detail to improve the experience of seeing the show for everyone in the audience. The orchestra meanwhile sounded brisk and dug in for most of the show. Dudamel’s trademark indulgently slow tempi at times continue to mar the proceedings here and there dragging out the overall performance and sometimes throwing vocalists off in the clutch, but he continues to be more deferential to them than not. But overall, the orchestral work provided first rate support and the L.A. Philharmonic can be proud of producing some excellent Verdi in one of the more inhospitable music venues in the city. It was also proof again that even without the names of famous architects and costume designers attached, the L.A. Phil and Dudamel are completely capable of producing great operatic performances under their own steam.

Labels: Hollywood Bowl 12