Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie
Photo : Greg Downer

The Los Angeles Master Chorale wrapped up their season on Sunday night at the WDCH with a highly anticipated program of operatic works. While the second half of the evening contained many of the old favorites from Verdi and others, the real draw was the premiere of a 75 minute or so selection of excerpts from Ricky Ian Gordon’s most recent opera The Grapes of Wrath featuring a libretto by Michael Korie. The work premiered last year at Minnesota Opera to strong reviews and is scheduled to make its fully-staged West Coast premiere with Opera Pacific next winter.

I had mixed feelings going into this in that my last brush with Gordon’s work in Long Beach earlier this year (with his Orpheus and Eurydice) wasn’t particularly impressive. I’m glad to say Wrath is more substantial and affecting despite the fact that this particular evening was saddled with significant problems. The first was Gordon himself who acted as narrator between movements reviewing some of the plot between each section. Gordon may be a talented composer, but there is an art to reading text in front of an audience, which is not his forte. The evening was also hampered by amplification problems. The sound was so grating for the first 20 minutes it bordered on the intolerable creating a ringing indistinguishable mass of noise. It still isn't clear to me why the amplification was necessary at all.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read Steinbeck’s novel and I’ve forgotten how depressing it is. It’s ripe for an operatic adaptation, and this isn’t a bad one, if a bit obvious at times. The music is tuneful and would probably be as comfortable in a blockbuster Broadway musical or mid-size Hollywood star vehicle. To paraphrase Betty Freeman, this is precisely music that tells you how you’re supposed to feel at all times, no guessing required. But this is opera, which is prone to sentimentality and there is a rich tradition of this form of composition from about the early 19th to about the early 20th century, so Gordon's approach is not without very venerable precedents. But in 2008, it doesn’t seem very daring even if it is well done.

Still, there are some wonderful bits including a scene where Noah Joad commits suicide that was quite moving. There are other pluses as well. The primary one was a sterling rendition of Ma Joad performed here by Elizabeth Bishop. A former Met National Council Auditions winner, she’s made her way around many American stages over the last several years, and tonight she shone like a bright light amidst a world full of shadows. She was in command and brought to her role a sense of suffering just below the beautiful tone of her voice. The rest of the cast was strong, but this is an LAMC show and as is typically the case, they were real superstars. Or as Grant Gershon himself noted from the stage later on – there is an amazing number of very talented vocalists amongst this crowd. Whether sharecroppers, Hebrew slaves, Russian peasants, or gypsies, the chorale delivered a superb performance.

It's worth noting that the evening served an additional purpose besides showing off the LAMC's talent. It was also a harbinger of things to come from director Grant Gershon himself now that he has taken over as chorus master at L.A. Opera. If he can do this here, then there is no reason that he can't do it across the street. Additionally, he will serve as Associate Conductor with LAO and will lead performances of La Traviata next summer. Although he is no stranger to the operatic stage, Gershon was on display proving that, if there were any doubters, he’s got what it takes to bring some increased excitement to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in seasons to come.

Labels: LA Master Chorale 07/08, Ricky Ian Gordon

Grant Gershon leads the LAMC
Photo : mine 2008

Lest I forget, I must say something about Sunday night’s Los Angeles Master Chorale performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall. I had a big weekend with many shows including Dudamel’s outing with the LA Phil, Piotr Anderszewski’s debonair Beethoven Piano Concerto with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra in the OC, and even the Metropolitan Opera’s HD broadcast of hopefully soon-to-be-retired root rot that is the Zeffirelli La Bohéme in Burbank. None of this, though, compared to the quality and sheer joy of the LAMC’s performance on Sunday.

It was woefully under attended, and, admittedly, the program was not filled with the kind of staples the choral crowd seems to thrive on, but it was a winner. I've come to believe that as great as the LAMC's performances are in conjunction with the LA Philharmonic, to really appreciate their many strengths, they are best savored without accompaniment. The first half of the evening was just such an experience structured around Henryk Górecki’s Five Marian Songs - beautiful Eastern European works from the mid-eighties that are filled with as much suffering and perseverance as they are joy and reverence. Gorecki's choral music may have, in the words of Gershon, "launched a thousand pledge drives" but this is exactly the kind of contemporary choral music the LAMC thrives on, and it was superb. After a pair of Schumann works thrown in for good measure, the program concluded with Haydn’s Theresienmesse as part of the LAMC's Haydn mass cycle. It was a good pairing and charming in its own admittedly 18th-century way. The soloists included Risa Larson, Leslie Inman, Jon Lee Keenan, and Steve Pence, and the group was accompanied by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. And, while the Mass was nobody's idea of a period performance, it was quite well done.

The other issue of note that evening was the announcement of the LAMC 08/09 season, which apparently will feature a badly needed new logo design, featured here in my not so great photo since it isn't up on-line yet. (Now, if they can just get rid of Victoria Looseleaf's inane program notes, they'd be in business in the PR department.)

The new season is a typical blend of the adventurous and thoughtful programming Gerson and the group have made their name on, including several world premieres, 20th century works, and the requisite holiday fare. Of particular interest are a performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah featuring Eric Owens and the West Coast premiere of Sierra's Missa Latina with Heidi Grant Murphy and Nathaniel Webster. All this and Pärt, Messiaen, and Lou Harrison. What's not to love?

Labels: LA Master Chorale 07/08, Music Reviews 07/08

Grant Gershon with the LAMC and LACO
Photo: mine 2007

You have to hand it to the Los Angeles Master Chorale and their fearless leader Grant Gershon. As Esa-Pekka Salonen used his influence to mold this city into one that has a strong appreciation of new music, the LAMC has not missed a beat throwing itself headlong in the same fashion commissioning new works right and left from living composers and keeping their programs challenging and inventive despite their decidedly low brow PR. Tonight’s concert was no exception in that it featured a substantial and tantalizing world premiere from Louis Andriessen, The City of Dis or: The Ship of Fools. The piece stems from his longstanding interest in Dante’s Divine Comedy and hearkens to an earlier work, Racconto dall’Inferno for orchestra and soprano, which had its US Premiere with the LA Phlharmonic in 3/06 with the incomparable Cristina Zavalloni. The City of Dis is a teaser in that it is a preliminary version of the first act of Andriessen’s latest operatic work La Commedia, which will debut this summer at De Nederlandse Opera with Zavalloni in the role of Dante. (If you’re thinking about plans for next summer as I am, here is an idea, DNO is running Commedia against Messiaen’s Saint Francois d’Assise)

The City of Dis shares much in common with Andriessen’s recent works for the stage. Just as he has collaborated with Peter Greenaway in the past, Andriessen will work with American independent film legend Hal Hartley on cinematic elements to be incorporated into the work's final performance. He has also treated the piece as a sort of collaboration with another young composer as he did in Writing to Vermeer with Michel van der Aa. Dis features “soundscape” contributions from former student, Anke Brouwer, who has captured ambient sounds from city life that burst throughout the work, most notably at the very opening in an almost Ligeti-like fashion.

The work is surprisingly varied for a piece about hell, containing rather bright music intermingled with the more menacing threads one would expect. Andriessen has always had a sense of humor and it shows here. His notion of hell is based somewhat on the life of modern cities and he makes references to them throughout using sounds such as shattering glass and car horns. Of course how can you start a work about descending into the city of hell without mentioning Gershwin, which Andriessen does by sticking a reworked version of An American in Paris into the introduction of The City of Dis. However, make no mistake, this composition is no paean to country life. It barrels through a variety of texts besides Dante including Psalm 107 and a Medieval Dutch version of The Ship of Fools.

Musically the work is scored for a small orchestra, two pianos, cimbalom, and choir. This version of the first act has little in the way of solo vocal performance with only short arias for Beatrice, Virgil, and Dante. The chorale sounded great as usual as did Deborah Mayhan as Beatrice, though most of the fireworks are reserved for the chorus. The text shifts between several different languages both current and historical creating a sense of disorientation. The music is trademark Andriessen, which is not as dissonant as one might think, but can be plenty unsettling when it’s called for. Admittedly this 20-minute snippet is hard to fit into a larger context, but what was played here under Grant Gershon’s leadership was certainly enticing enough to make me want to hear more. The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra played admirably though not as cleanly and insightfully as one might have hoped.

The rest of the evening's program featured music concerning the desire for peace in a time of war - Haydn’s Misa in Tempore Belli and Tormis’ Varjele, Jumala, soasta. As effective as these were, the program seemed strangely distanced from such an obviously current theme. Not much was said about it during the course of the program and Haydn’s 18th century version of suffering and catharsis sounds very different from contemporary ones. Still, the performance from LACO and the LAMC under the leadership of Jeffrey Kahane in this half of the program was admirable as all of the Haydn masses LAMC has presented over the last few years. But then again maybe little more needed to be said than to let the music itself "speak" for itself.

Labels: LA Master Chorale 07/08