Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

On Thursday, things finally settled down a bit for Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Over half way through the current enigmatically titled “Brahms Unbound” survey of the composer’s major symphonies and the German Requiem, the orchestra seemed to hit its stride with the first really enjoyable show of the series. Why that is, I can’t exactly tell you. Maybe it’s just that the practice time together during the series is finally reaching a critical capacity. Or perhaps it was the sad circumstances that had led to a change in the evening’s program –the loss of the previously planned new work from the late Peter Lieberson in favor the Requiem–like Górecki’s Symphony No. 3. But it did work right from the beginning. Given the length and scope of the Górecki piece, the other piece on the program, Brahms’ Symphony No. 3, had been moved to the front of the show. It was a wise move in that it took pressure off the performance. Dudamel kept tempi on target and a larger amount of the work’s overall structure could be appreciated. Dudamel still exhibited his tendency to keep the musical CAPS LOCK button down with an urge to treat all details great and small with an equal weight, but this was definitely the most easy-going his Brahms has been throughout the series.

Of course, the reordering of the program was enacted to give the work that is Górecki’s primary claim to fame room to breathe. His Symphony No. 3 has a notable recent history. Composed in the mid-1970s, the work is subtitled Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and features a solo vocal part for soprano. The Polish texts vary, but all three reflect on loss, including the final movement, which concerns a mother’s pain at the loss of her son in an act of political violence. It’s pretty and very quiet, meditative music that’s clean and rather plainly developed. The symphony, like all of Górecki’s music, was largely unknown until 1991 when the London Sinfonietta released a wildly popular recording of the work under David Zinman with Dawn Upshaw. In fact, the work has received so much attention, that it has suffered somewhat in recent years from a critical backlash questioning the work’s musical sophistication and technical merit. But the work is still programmed frequently, often in settings like this weekend’s where it can serve as a reflection for any number of tragic losses in a manner not unlike Verdi’s Requiem or several other memorial themed works. The tragedy of the Bosnian War of the early 1990s may have contributed to the emotional reaction audiences had to the work then, and there are sadly just as many tragedies to commemorate now from the war crimes of Ratko Mladic to the tragic loss of Lieberson.

And under those auspices, it was a very moving performance. The soloist was Jessica Rivera who was planted right in the center of the orchestra, providing both an integration of her sound and a rather dramatic visual effect at some angles. Again the temptation to drag things out beyond their breaking point was resisted by all and a sense of reconciliation permeated the score just as Górecki had intended. If I had any quibble with the performance, it was the somewhat maudlin lighting and theatrical flairs used to augment the performance, with the audience kept in the dark and the orchestra using lights on their stands in addition to the requisite spots for conductor and soloist. It struck me as a step too far, attempting to provide a visual telegraphing of the emotional content of the piece, just in case you missed it, as if the audience couldn’t be relied upon to sort out the point on their own. Still in a show loaded with the kinds of moments that Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic have trampled over in recent months, the show was a refreshing and rather touching surprise.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

The composer and current “Creative Chair” of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, John Adams, returned to L.A. this week for the orchestra’s final “Green Umbrella” new music program on Tuesday. It was an exciting night at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the riskiest one musically I’ve seen there in awhile. On the agenda were three world premieres all from composers under 35 as well as a concluding work from the adventurous Steven Mackey. Much has been made out of the fact that all three of the younger composers, as well as a number of others, currently work out of Brooklyn. But this fact tells one very little about who these artists are or what kind of work they produce. All of the works on Tuesday's program pushed boundaries in interesting ways, and even though everything didn’t work, it was an evening that recaptured a sense of adventure, once the cornerstone of the orchestra, which has sadly been placed on the back burner in recent years.

But Tuesday was about music written by people with a pulse, which is exactly what it did. First up was an intricate and fascinating short work from Missy Mazzoli for solo violin. Entitled Dissolve, O my Heart, Mazzoli created the piece for violinist Jennifer Koh as one of a series of works referencing Bach’s solo violin Sonatas and Partitas. Koh wanted Mazzoli to start with the Chaconne from the Partita in D minor. Mazzoli agreed and the resulting work is a wonder of intricacy and understatement taking off from Bach’s opening D-minor chord. Mazzoli would return to this chord throughout the work, but it was otherwise purely her own invention. It’s the kind of piece that slips through your fingers on a first listen, but it lived up to Mazzoli’s reputation as a clever and challenging musical powerhouse.

No shorter on ambition was Gabriel Kahane’s Orinoco Sketches that followed. Kahane has established a reputation as a musical chameleon producing works in a variety of genres from musical theater and pop songs to concert works. Orinoco Sketches is his largest orchestral work to date, but still takes the form of a song cycle, one of his preferred and most successful formats. Kahane used the diaries of his paternal grandmother who passed away recently as source material about her own escape from Europe during the Holocaust and her crossing to America in the late 1930s. It’s powerful stuff packaged in some fascinating music that mashes a kind of singer-songwriter confessional à la Nick Drake with the orchestral writing of Alban Berg. It is music that seems familiar but blooms periodically into something dark and wonderful. Kahane played piano and guitar and provided vocals for the performance. And while the vocals were marred by muddy amplification, it was a starkly moving piece filled with the rhythms of Cuba and New Orleans before ending up on Fairfax Blvd. wondering about a hellish world on the other side of the earth. It was certainly the high-point of the program.

There was more amazement after the break with Andrew Norman’s Try. Norman is no stranger to the Los Angeles Philharmonic stage having had other works performed as part of the "Green Umbrella" series. Try is a sharply funny single movement and a no-holds barred barn burner for fifteen players with central string quartet surrounded by winds, brass, a bass, percussion, and piano. From the start the entire ensemble takes off in a wild disorganized flurry of activity in every direction. Soon this activity is interrupted by the piano which emits a single clear note after a brief pause. This joke produced increasing amounts of laughter on repetition as the calm and collected keyboard refused to join in with the high voltage aerobics of the rest of the crowd. It was a fun piece to see as well as hear, and Norman, who studied at USC among other places was enthusiastically received.

With all this youth and beauty, the concluding work on the program, Steven Mackey’s Four Iconoclastic Episodes was a relative golden oldie. Adams’ conducted this double concerto for violin and electric guitar as with all the other ensembles of the night. Mackey performed the guitar solo parts while Jennifer Koh returned for the violin fireworks. Four Iconoclastic Episodes is aptly titled with its unique blurring of the lines between a sound most associate with contemporary rock and pop music, the guitar, and the concert hall’s concerto for strings. It’s a bold idea and the amplification was kinder to the ensemble here than elsewhere. Admittedly, it was an idea that I appreciated more in concept than execution. I couldn’t quite get over the two electric guitars Mackey used with their pop chart licks and wails. Try as I might, I couldn’t remove that scene from the film Xanadu from my head where Gene Kelly and Michael Beck fantasize about what kind of night club they are going to open. Kelly’s 1940s big band slowly merges with Beck’s 1980s glam rock outfit in a wince inducing mélange that even with the help of a muse, turns into little more than a roller disco in the end. Maybe Olivia Newton-John could have helped out on Tuesday as well, especially when Koh unexpectedly broke the bridge on her instrument in the final movement of the work. And yet I’d take an interesting misfire like this any day along with the boundary testing works of the other young composers over some reheated and “unbound” Brahms. Here’s looking forward to return visits and more music from all of the composers involved this week.

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Sofia Gubaidulina’s excellent adventure here in Los Angeles this week didn’t end with the excellent and varied shows performed at REDCAT that wrapped up on Tuesday. In fact, she got one more parting shot, and it was a doozy. This most remarkable of living composers brought her recent orchestra work, Glorious Percussion to the stage of the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel. (You can get a taste of the piece above with Dudamel conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in the same work.) Dudamel had a hand in the work’s world premiere, which he conducted in the fall of 2008 with the other orchestra he serves as principal conductor for, the Gothenburg Symphony in Sweden. The work features an ensemble of five percussionists in addition to the regular percussionists of the Los Angeles Philharmonic who play an incredibly large array of instruments from timpani to Javanese gongs and 6 bass drums. Gubaidulina’s love of percussion and particularly ethnic and folk instruments is at the heart of this work that was so inspirational to the five musicians who played the feature roles in the work’s premiere that they took the work’s name as their own in founding a new percussion group. All five of those players were on hand and they, along with the orchestra, brought this immense work raging to life. Like much of Gubaidulina’s sound world, there is darkness and grating edges mixed in with loud dramatic waves of sound. Bass drums come crashing through in unison at times, and at others the bright tinkling of chimes and triangles flutter about like butterflies. The work is divided into distinct sections where groupings of similar percussion instruments are highlighted and often are accompanied by complementary sounds from the orchestra – the chimes run in parallel to the woodwinds and at one point there is an extended dialogue between a bass and a Yoruba talking drum. This is not some pluralistic world percussion tour, however, and Gubaidulina strives to emphasize the central, almost lyrical, role that the sound of the many percussion instruments play in the piece. It’s stirring and sometimes almost scary, like being lost in the forest of Schoenberg’s Erwartung. It was a thrilling performance and a perfect capstone to Gubaidulina’s time in Southern California.

But perhaps an equally shocking event on Thursday came right before the start of Glorious Percussion when Dudamel spoke from the stage. He noted that Brahms’ Tragic Overture scheduled to start the evening had been dropped from the program for time and logistics. But he went on to give a detailed and spirited explanation of how he came across the piece and why the audience should care about it. I know. You could have knocked me over with a feather. This gesture, an everyday occurrence on the WDCH stage just over two years ago, has vanished into the midst of overworked American orchestral classics more recently. This is the first time the L.A. Phil’s current music director, to my knowledge, has given this kind of personal public consideration to a piece of contemporary music since arriving in L.A. Dudamel stated that when he arrived in Gothenburg as principal conductor in 2007, he was asked to conduct a world premiere commission from Gubaidulina. He stated he was apprehensive about this since in “[his] country” it was all about older music such as Mahler, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky. (Of course why anyone at the L.A. Phil thought that hiring someone with this sort of background to replace Salonen was a good idea is still beyond me.) But Dudamel was won over by the music. It’s great that he was willing to step forward and try to involve the audience in something other than the most predictable concert fare imaginable, and I hope he keeps it up even if his heart isn’t completely in it. But at least there was this one shining moment.

The rest of the evening was taken up with a predictable Dudamel take on Brahms’ Symphony No.2 with all of the requisite slow, dragging tempi and the balance and cohesion problems that have continued to plague this Brahms’ series. Let’s hope the L.A. Phil’s young maestro continues to explore his relatively recent discovery of newer music. It might give Brahms and some of Dudamel’s beloved old masters a chance to breath.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

From Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire

There was more unbinding of Brahms to attend to on Thursday with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under music director Gustavo Dudamel. But before getting down to that Herculean labor, there was some newer music to attend to: the West Coast Premiere of Steven Mackey’s Beautiful Passing. One of the few premieres originally scheduled as part of the the L.A. Phil’s "Brahms Unbound" series that has actually arrived as planned, Beautiful Passing is a single movement violin concerto composed for Leila Josefowicz who performed it on Friday. (Mackey's work, like Gubaidulina's Glorious Percussion on tap for next weekend, both had their world premieres elsewhere previously decreasing the likelihood of derailment here by events tragic or otherwise.) Beautiful Passing mines traditional soloist vs. orchestra concerto dynamics with the violin playing material in opposition to the orchestra in the first part of the score. The solo violin's more meditative lines are repeatedly interrupted by brash and sometimes comical outbursts from the orchestra. Tennis balls crash against the timpani and Josefowicz played along looking almost irritated by these goings on. After a short cadenza, the order of things changed with the violin now puckishly calling the shots and everyone working together until a peaceful resolution is achieved. Score one for the soloist. I liked the spirit of Beautiful Passing despite Mackey’s tendencies toward sentimentality and its familiar dynamic. Of course, writing music for Josefowicz is always an excellent idea considering her ability to make even the most obvious of gestures seem brilliant and inspired. She made the piece and as usual was great to watch.

Then came Brahms’ German Requiem, which on this evening enlisted the considerable talents of the Los Angeles Master Chorale and soloists Christine Schäfer and Matthias Goerne. This is perhaps one of the thorniest and most difficult to like works Brahms produced. Although it has its advocates, Schoenberg among them, there's a parallel historical litany of great figures who’ve disparaged the work as well, including some of those who generally favored Brahms’ music. There is undoubtedly some wonderful music in it that argues against what George Bernard Shaw saw as an “intolerable tedium” and in the right hands it can shine. Those hands do not belong to Gustavo Dudamel at this point in time. If Shaw was looking for evidence to support his assessment of Brahms’ requiem, Dudamel delivered it in spades. Bloated and laborious, beautiful passages in the score were often left to drift on a sea of dross. Granted Dudamel could produce some lovely Individual moments. The performance certainly had more edges to it than the one given by the Dresden Staatskapelle last fall in New York under Daniel Harding which sank under the impervious sheen of its highly polished but emotionless playing. It almost goes without saying though that the L.A. Phil performance under Dudamel stretched out to ridiculous proportions clocking in at 79 minutes. But worse than any tempo issue, was Dudamel's loss of the bigger picture. There was little of the promised consolation for the living in this performance of Brahms’ uniquely humanistic mass for the dead. The evening often seemed to be running in any number of different directions at once with its rough groupings of big climaxes here and overworked detail there.

There were some saving graces, however. The Los Angeles Master Chorale sounded superb. They are on the go for this whole evening from beginning to end and they never let their energy flag regardless with what was going on around them. And then there is Matthias Goerne. He was devastatingly good with his burnished tone and ease of delivery. He suddenly injected real emotion and drama into the evening every time he stood, pointing the way to the balm Brahms had in mind in the works composition. Frankly he was so good that his appearance alone makes the evening worthwhile. Not everything rose to his level in the performance, but there were moments it came close. So, go prepared to be amazed even if the experience on the whole is at turns brutal and exhausting. The show repeats through Sunday.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

Leonidas Kavakos Photo: Yannis Bournias

This weekend is the start of a whole month of the music at Brahms with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under its current music director Gustavo Dudamel. The series goes by the obtuse moniker of “Brahms Unbound,” and pairs Brahms' own masterworks with more recent compositions to imply apparent connections between the two in some cases. This weekend's program, for instance, featured Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 paired with a Dutilleux Violin Concerto, L’Arbre des sognes, played by Leonidas Kavakos. Yet, following the decidedly rocky results of this first program under the predictably uneven Dudamel, the series might better be called “Brahms Unbearable.” Two seasons into his Los Angeles tenure, what Dudamel had in store for the Brahms’ Symphony, which anchored the evening, should be no surprise to anyone paying attention: tempos so slow that they defied logic, stressful overworking of the smallest details, and a complete lack of pacing and overarching vision for the performance. It was an arduous though not always unpleasant listen. There was good news. The strings were richer and more lustrous sounding than you could imagine at times. Big crescendos got the rise out of players and audience that they deserved. But much was sacrificed to achieve these effects. The first two movements would periodically grind to a near halt. Granted, such an arrest was a blissful promise the audience was denied as Dudamel dove into another moment or passage like he was desperately rummaging around a junk drawer looking for some vital key. If he found what he was looking for, it was anyone’s guess. Granted there are critics in this town that will attempt to convince you that this glacial approach is a youthful exuberance intent on savoring every musical moment. But don’t believe the hype. Sometimes slow is just slow.

The preceding part of the evening was far more successful. Following a full-bodied turn of Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture came the real highlight of the night, Dutilleux’ 1985 L’Arbre des Sognes which was being played here in Los Angeles for the first time. This seamless four movement violin concerto was played by Leonidas Kavakos and is marked by a sort of nervous energy that eschews long lyrical lines for taut punctuated showers of sound. There are no pauses between the movements, which has an organic feel as if the piece were regenerating itself, growing and changing as it went along. Dutilleux did not intend the work to be a platform for showboating, and the integration between Kavakos and the orchestra was tightly integrated. The performance struck me as having a certain fragility or brittleness that suited it well. One could argue that it was a decidedly un-Brahmsian approach and the concerto provided a nice contrast to the histrionics of the rest of the evening. The shows are heavily sold both for this weekend and the rest of the month. So if you've got a ticket and you like your Brahms stretched out to fill up the maximum time possible, you're going to love this.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

Gustavo Dudamel

After trotting out the old chestnut about gaining insight through completing one’s biological imperative, Reed Johnson quotes Gustavo Dudamel in today’s Los Angeles Times, thus:

"I'm doing really crazy things," [Dudamel] said, citing a lineup that will partner Brahms' Second Symphony with Sofia Gubaidulina's "Glorious Percussion," aptly named for the ensemble that premiered the piece with the Gothenburg Symphony under Dudamel in 2008; and Brahms' "A German Requiem" with the West Coast premiere of "Beautiful Passing" by Steven Mackey, who found his groove playing in rock bands and has written concertos for electric guitar.

Well, crazy for him maybe. Apparently fatherhood is not the only everyday revelation Dudamel has had recently. As “crazy” as it may seem to him, L.A. audiences have grown accustomed to exactly this kind of programming over the last two decades or so. But I suppose paring contemporary works with 19th century ones on a concert program, much like fatherhood, seems pretty unique to you when it’s a new experience.

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Conductor David Afkham Photo: Julien Luebbert

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is perhaps the most readily identifiable piece of “classical” music there is. Its music, and particularly its opening chords, are synonymous with an entire genre of music outside of the popular sphere, and even in an American culture landscape with an arguably dwindling interest in classical music it is immediately recognized by just about everyone even if not by name. With such daunting odds, making the work sound fresh would seem impossible. And yet it does happen. And it happened right here in Los Angeles this weekend under the baton of a young man not yet thirty. No, not that one. It was David Afkham, the up-and-coming German conductor who has worked closely with Gergiev as an Assistant Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and won the inaugural 2010 Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Prize. He’s currently in Los Angeles as one of the L.A. Phil's conducting fellows, and he was tapped in a pinch this weekend to fill in for an ailing Jaap van Zweden. Given his track record, that he is talented is not surprising. That he pulled out so exciting a performance of a most tried and true warhorse is. From the minute he came out on stage, there was no messing around. He dove into those opening chords with speed and intensity that were breathtaking and indicative of a larger picture approach to the work. This was a performance both rich in detail but fleet and energetic. It was also remarkable in that none of the symphony’s movements were overworked or sloppy. It was fabulously exciting music making from an orchestra that played with some authentic fire but maintained balance and respected the work's larger structural elements at the same time.

There were many other reasons to cheer. The evening started with a solid run through of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, a replacement for Escher’s Musique pour l’esprit en deuil which changed with the last minute conductor substitution. Granted the 20th century work was missed, but under the circumstances, it’s loss was to be expected. Of course Afkham had two opportunities to prove himself in 20th century repertoire this week. The other major work on this weekend’s program was Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante, a cello concerto in three movements that was performed by L.A. Phil Principal cellist Peter Stumpf. This is a thorny work with wildly varying passages within and between movements. It can be dark and foreboding and folk-like by turns, presaging the work of Shostakovich. Afkham managed to expertly hold the whole proceedings together while giving Stumpf room for a magnificent performance filled with both biting energy and beautiful lyrical control. It was a complete pleasure. Afkham’s other big moment in Los Angeles this week came on Tuesday leading a small ensemble in a chamber version of Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat. The puckish score about a deal with the devil that is negotiated and then renegotiated comes complete with narration which was provided in this case by a somewhat overly done Bennett Schneider. The piece is suggestive of The Rake's Progress in its themes. Tuesday's performance with its plucked strings and ribald horns was another testament to Afkham’s ability to manage diverse elements with rhythmic complexity while keeping the larger work integrated. This was Stravinsky at his witty folkloric best and the musical performance was excellent. It was a big debut week for Afkahm at the Phil, and it will hopefully not be the last we see this truly talented young conductor in our midst.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

Conductor David Afkham Photo: Horschülr für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar

Now here’s some exciting news. The Los Angeles Philharmonic has just announced that David Afkham will be the last minute replacement for Jaap van Zweden in this weekend’s performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and Prokofiev's Sinfonia concertante. Afkham has won a number of big conducting programs including the inaugural 2010 Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award. He’s a protégé of Valery Gergiev and has worked as Assistant Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra since 2007. The 28-year-old German maestro is in town conducting some of the Toyota Symphonies for Youth programs and was tagged to fill in for this previously scheduled program as well. Word is that he’s the next big thing and in a twist, actually has the talent to back it up, so his mainstage appearance should be worth seeing.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

Juraj Valcuha

Yefim Bronfman’s visits to the Los Angeles Philharmonic tend to be special occasions. He played a wide variety of works on the Walt Disney Concert Hall stage, some that stand out in my memory more than others. I was particularly fond of his Shostakovich First Piano Concerto, which seemed to thrive under his muscular, emphatic approach. Considering the works he has performed that I’ve been most taken with, I would not have thought the Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto scheduled for this weekend would have been among them. But that’s one of the great things about this music, you never can tell. Bronfman’s Brahms was in a word thrilling. From beginning to end, he was forceful but never to the point that it was overwhelming. Both the first and second movements had that perfect combination of effortlessness and bold assurance that is a joyful rarity. Better yet, Bronfman was well matched with Juraj Valcuha in his conducting debut with the L.A. Philharmonic. Valcuha is another young and very handsome young man who has a rising profile and will be making many debut performances with the world's major orchestras over the next two season. This performance for one bodes quite well for his future. Bronfman was well complemented for so many years in his collaborations here with Esa-Pekka Salonen, and this young Slovakian seemed to have a similar musical disposition in terms of both clarity and finish resulting in a performance that was so well integrated that it was often surprising this was a concerto at all.

Valcuha displayed the same strengths in the first half of the evening as well in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1. This is not the most familiar of works for a composer who often suffers the contempt of listeners precisely because of their familiarity. It can also be said that it may not be as satisfying as those same ballets and symphonies. There are some lovely winter wonderland moments in the first movement, however, and Valcuha did his best to make the most of them. He seemed more concerned about clarity and detail overall, and while more could have been made of the Scherzo and Finale, I was very appreciative of this decidedly less overheated approach overall. The evenings where this kind of control and subtlety are a priority are few and far between these days on the L.A. Phil stage, and this is a program not to be missed for those who miss those qualities in our local and beloved orchestra.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

Nicolaj Znaider

After the celestial highs of programs under the guidance of Thomas Adès over the last two weeks, the Los Angeles Philharmonic returned to more earthly, work-a-day classical music realms this weekend. That is not a bad thing, and an evening including Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 and the Elgar Violin concerto was certainly welcomed. Well, at least the Tchaikovsky was. The conductor this weekend is Vassily Sinaisky a familiar face in both London and Moscow where her recently took over as Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Bolshoi Theater. He was paired with soloist Nicolaj Znaider, who played the Elgar concerto on the Guarnerius “del Gesu” 1741 violin, which at one time was played by Fritz Kreisler for whom Elgar originally composed the concerto. It's an interesting bit of serendipity that Znaider has been making the most of for over a year now both recording the concerto and playing it all over the world. It might have been even more intriguing if Elgar’s music were a little more enticing. As it stands, this lengthy concerto can often seem meandering with rather sobering and low expectations. It's a work filled with restraint and not an easy nut to crack. Not that there aren’t significant technical demands that Znaider met, but I found his performance somewhat aloof. Znaider is a relatively big man at 6-foot-4 and not prone to demonstrative physicality in his playing. He played using a score and although he's obviously familiar with the piece, I never felt like I was getting any closer to unlocking it as a listener. I found the concerto somewhat dry and removed in tone and rather hard to warm up to.

The Tchaikovsky that followed sounded a bit more convinced of where it was going, and the L.A. Phil players sounded more dug in. Tchaikovsky, of course, is a lot less unclear about the emotional content of things and Sinaisky led a fairly driven and robust performance. There was a strong rhythmic sense throughout and I thought the woodwinds outdid themselves last night especially bassoonist Shawn Mouser and Principal oboe Ariana Ghez. It’s a sizable symphony with an expected big ending that isn't particularly cathartic even in the context of a fairly dramatic performance. But Sinaisky gave the symphony the attention it deserved for a pretty nice evening overall.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

The bad news about being ou of town this weekend was missing Saturday Night's finale to the Los Angeles Philaharmonic's "Aspects of Adès" festival which included the composer conducting his own Polaris with video from Tal Rosner as well as Messiaen's Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà. I'll be kicking myself for missing this one for awhile, but luckily my friend Lou emailed me this brief account.

Ades' Polaris was absolutely fantastic. I was pleased to see Frank Gehry there. This was Adès' commission to open the new New World Symphony Concert Hall in Miami last year, which Gehry and Yasuhisa Toyota designed. The visuals were much less distracting than in Adès In Seven Days which was performed last weekend. Rosner spoke at the pre-concert lecture this weekend about the visuals, which made it more comprehensible. The music sounded and felt so much like waves on the ocean, and the visual reflected that so nicely.

The Messiaen was transcendent. We've been so fortunate to hear the Turangalila-symphonie in October, and now this. Adès did a terrific job of conducting, considering it must have been a handful to steer the 120 plus musicians on stage toward a single unified sound. The percussion was squeezed into the portion of the auditorium usually reserved for bench seating between the stage and organ, and to their side were the low brass. The brass sounded immense and got a big workout. They've never sounded better and got to play entire movements of the work without any other accompaniment from the orchestra. The penultimate movement was quite the roof raiser, followed by the last movement which transported you to heaven. What a treat.

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[Permalink] Posted by Brian | 4/11/2011 12:54:00 AM | 1 comments

Conlon Nancarrow Photo: Betty Freeman

Tuesday brought the next installment in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Aspects of Adès” Festival to Walt Disney Concert Hall. This was a “Green Umbrella” program, the increasingly rudderless new(er) music series that has traditionally drawn comparatively huge crowds for this kind of programming for a major U.S. orchestra. But on Tuesday there was no leadership vacuum, even if just for that night, when composer, conductor, and pianist Thomas Adès thrilled the audience with performances in all three of those roles. The evening cast a very wide net with musical offerings that my friend Robert likened to an old-fashioned musical salon with a little bit of something for everyone. It was amazing how well so much of the show worked.

Things began with Adès alone at the piano playing a recently constructed piano paraphrase of his own 1995 opera Powder Her Face. And while the fifteen minute work was clearly musically related to the opera, this paraphrase was much more than a regurgitation. The work harkens back to the kind of keyboard virtuosity Liszt regularly displayed in similar exercises for his audiences, augmenting a recognizable opera score with huge washes of other complementary ideas. It was a barn-burner and a great kick off to the evening. This was quickly followed by Ligeti’s Sippal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel for mezzo-soprano and percussion. The So Percussion ensemble, armed with a dizzying variety of gongs, marimbas, slide whistles and harmonicas supported vocalist Katalin Károlyi for whom the piece was originally written. These seven compact songs are concise and humorous, often using the voice in a similar rhythmic fashion as the various percussion instruments. The penultimate song, Keserédes, plops an intense folk song right in the mix for contrast in a piece brimming with humor. (Károlyi will also appear in the world premiere of Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest later this week in the part of Gwendolen Fairfax.)

But before we got a breather, Adès returned accompanied by pianists Nicolas Hodges and Gavin DeTurck who each took part in one of Conlon Nancarrow’s Studies for Player Piano. The twist here is that there was no player piano. Instead, Adès arranged the works for two pianos, breaking out the layered, rhythmically complex lines in each study into separate parts playable on two different keyboards. The energy was brilliant and the pieces were very enthusiastically received by the crowd. All of this was also accompanied by video from Tal Rosner, as has most of Adès’ own music he has selected for this festival, including last weekend’s In Seven Days and the local premiere of Polaris which will occur on Saturday night. Again, the players were wired with earbuds to feed them a click-track to tightly coordinate the music with changes in the video. As with last weekend, the video could be a bit overwhelming with its tight synchronicity, but the technical aspects of the musical performance were outstanding for music that wasn’t written to be performed in this kind of context.

The rest of the evening was devoted to two works for a small chamber ensemble calling upon several members of the L.A. Phil New Music Group. The first was the world premiere of Piedras from Spanish composer and Adès protogée Francisco Coll. This was followed by Adès’s own Concerto Conciso, one of his earliest works written at an age not too far off from Coll’s own. The works had much in common with rhythmically intricate underpinnings covered with a wild array of disorganized sounds raging above them. Admittedly, it's hard to get a grip on first performances of new works and in pieces that prize a free-wheeling flurry of sound to a sense of control. Still, I felt both works seemed a little loose and under-rehearsed compared with what one might expect with the energy flagging and getting bogged down along the way. But with all the good will still streaming in from the first half, the show on balance was yet more evidence of Adès’ smarts and sheer talent. And if you haven’t been getting excited about this weekend’s upcoming performances, maybe now is the time you should.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

Heaven only knows what it takes to fill Walt Disney Concert Hall these days. In February the Los Angeles Philharmonic gave us Dudamel, Hollywood celebrities, and lowest common denominator Tchaikovsky and had no problem. Earlier this week there was nary an empty seat for an Ernest Fleischmann tribute with thorny works from Boulez, Donatoni, and Stravinsky featuring Salonen and Boulez in the flesh with free tickets for everyone. But despite the L.A. Phil’s reputation for being able to pull big audiences for programs with newer and contemporary music, Friday’s performance of the orchestra under Thomas Adès featuring his own In Seven Days paired with works of Stravinsky seemed unusually poorly attended. Take your pick as to the explanation, but it’s a shame either way considering it was one of the best and brightest L.A. Philharmonic shows so far this season.


There was a lot going on and the connections between the works that made up the evening seemed numerous and often multi-faceted. The first half of the night was devoted to Stravinsky. Local favorites (or at least two of my favorites), Marielle and Katia Labèque started the night with Stravinsky’s Concerto for Two Solo Pianos. It’s a prickly and virtuosic showpiece filled with aggressive flourishes as opposed to lush warmth à la Shostakovich. The Labèques were their usual exciting selves playing amidst a wash of changing blocks of light mirrored on the screen behind them. And besides the gentle whirring of the fans in those light projectiors suspended from above, it was a pretty amazing performance. The centrality of the piano and primitive, sometimes jarring sounds carried over into the performance of Stravinsky’s Les noces with the Labèques, Nicholas Hodges, and Gregory De Turck on piano as well as the So Percussion ensemble joining Joseph Pereira and Wade Culbreath on the wide variety of percussion the piece calls for. This setting of traditional Russian folk lyrics tells the tale of a peasant wedding and the L.A. Philharmonic invited the Pokrovsky Ensemble to serve as the chorus and soloists for the evening in this work, which they have recorded for Nonesuch (as pictured above). The sharp edges of the piece came to life in Adès’s hands and the passionate and traditional Russian vocal style from the Pokrovsky singers was thrilling to watch and hear. I felt that even in front of the musicians, however, some of the soloists were a bit too easily drowned out and I suspect that a little judicious amplification might have gone a good way in evening things out, but it was a strong performance nonetheless.

After the break came Adès’ own In Seven Days, a work he premiered in 2008 and which had previously been seen here as part of an L.A. Philharmonic's ”Green Umbrella” program in May of that year. Adès' seven movements recount the general events of Genesis in a piano concerto setting that is played without pauses. It was excellently paired with the Stravinsky works not only for the centrality of piano, but also because it also relies on a sort of primitive cultural scene at its heart. As before, In Seven Days was presented with its video accompaniment by Adés’s partner and video artist Tal Rosner. (Interestingly enough, Rosner has also created a video to accompany a recording of the above mentioned Stravinsky piano "concerto" played by the Labèques that you can see in the link above, although it was not part of Friday's program.) They term the work a “video-ballet” and Rosner’s six-channel video of abstract shapes and colors pulses throughout. There is a direct rhythmic connection between the video and music with big crescendos met with huge bursts of visual activity and the sort. When I saw the piece May 2008, I admired Adès accessible variations on a theme and his rich sweep of harmonies. Nicholas Hodges returned to play the piano part, which is demanding, but far more integrated into the sound of the orchestra than the traditional piano concerto. But as before, this time I found myself preoccupied by the video in a negative way. Despite its abstraction, the images tend to be overly prescriptive, telegraphing your response to the music. I felt I wasn’t sure what I was hearing as my eyes filled with waves of geometric forms dancing around in the ever shifting light. But while In Seven Days may not be the pinnacle of Adès musical career, it’s still very enchanting to watch and listen to in a mathematical, percolating way rather than a dramatic Wagnerian beginning of the world one. The program repeats Saturday night and Sunday this weekend.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

Ernest Fleischmann in 1988 Photo: Lebrecht Collection

At 86, the composer, conductor, and lion of late 20th-century music, Pierre Boulez, rarely makes appearances on the West Coast. So when he appeared to conduct his own sur Incises on Tuesday night at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, you know it was a very special occasion. Indeed, the evening was a tribute to the late Ernest Fleischmann, a champion of new music, and an administrator who reshaped classical music in Los Angeles and around the country. Fleischmann’s achievements are too numerous to mention but include at a minimum being the driving force behind remaking the Hollywood Bowl, building the Walt Disney Concert Hall, establishing the career of Esa-Pekka Salonen, and turning the Los Angeles Philharmonic from a regional orchestra into a world-class one over his three decade association with them. Not that everything he touched turned to gold. Despite landmark achievements, there were some bad decisions and no one achieves this much in a lifetime without some interpersonal collateral damage along the way. But on Tuesday, the focus was on the bright spots in his legacy as Boulez and Salonen were both present for the tribute concert and both spoke with deep love and admiration for their friend and mentor.

It couldn’t have been a finer musical tribute. It was an aggressively modern program that featured the kind of bold music and playing Fleischmann helped make the orchestra’s calling card. Boulez’ masterful performance of sur Incises was a wonder of precision and clarity. Three pianos, three harps, and three percussionists create a waxing and waning flurry of activity. Crystalline ringing rose and then washed into dark eddies for music that was both expansive and overwhelming at times. The second half of the show featured three works including Salonen’s setting of Dona Nobis Pacem for children’s choir. This a cappella work performed by the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus under Anne Tomlinson was perhaps the most musically reverent of the whole evening. Next was Donatoni’s Arpège, which featured members of the L.A. Philharmonic’s New Music Group under Lionel Bringuier in another work marked by its rhythmic intricacy and virtuosic demands. The program concluded with Salonen himself on the podium leading the group and four male vocalists from the L.A. Master Chorale in Stravinsky’s Renard. The comical piece, which recounts the adventures of a fox who lures birds unsuspectingly into her clutches who is then given her own comeuppance by some humans, was tautly played with the Salonen hallmark attention to detail. The Russian text was sung by four of the L.A. Master Chorale's finest including its director tenor, Grant Gershon. The maestro shared that Renard was a piece Fleischmann loved, and his accompanying humorous anecdote about Fleischmann’s reputation as a driver spoke of his love for a lost friend. Renard's warmth and humor was the perfect close to the tribute evening.

It was a somewhat bittersweet evening for me, though. As much as I loved the performances and admired their high quality, it was another reminder that today's L.A. Phil, under music director Gustavo Dudamel, is not the same one it was even just five years ago. The music and faces on Tuesday's program spoke far more of the orchestra's history than its current state. All of this passion for contemporary music and the relationships that helped foster the ascendency of the L.A. Philharmonic, are increasingly a thing of the past amidst the TV cameras and exposed navels of Hollywood celebrities that pass for programming these days. Now, certainly Fleischmann himself was not against publicity when the opportunity arose. But an increasingly artistically-bifurcated L.A. Phil seems to me to be looking for a way to stay relevant in a classical music world that will one day be without the likes of Boulez and Ernest Fleischmann.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

Conductor Kurt Masur

This weekend’s Los Angeles Philharmonic program saw the combination of one of its more frequent guests, violinist Sarah Chang, and a face that hasn’t been around these parts in quite awhile, conductor Kurt Masur. Now at 83, Masur has been spending the spring headlining with a number of American orchestras, and his visit here had been rumbled about given the long repeated rumors of conflicts with current Los Angeles Philharmonic president Deborah Borda when the pair were in leadership positions with the New York Philharmonic in the 1990s. There were certainly no interpersonal fireworks I could appreciate on Saturday when I saw Masur lead the orchestra in a program that included Mendelssohn’s “Hebrides” Overture, Brahms’ Violin Concerto and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8. Things started stoically with the Mendelssohn. It was a professional performance with Masur making relatively few gestures while conducting and those he did seemed burdened, requiring excessive effort.

And speaking of burdened and excessive effort, enter Sarah Chang for the Brahms. She assaulted the concerto with a fervor that was not without its virtuosity but wanted for a more lyrical sense and flow. Of course, with Chang you always get the bonus of a floor show. When things get intense, she starts stomping and kicking around the stage like an extra in a Li'l Abner revival. Of course, if you weren’t going to get stomped on, there was always the chance you might get nailed by Chang’s bow which she wielded like an épée at times after completing her solo passages. And while it may be unfair to focus here on the physical mannerisms of her stage presence, in the end they do add to the sensation of her playing being somewhat labored as if she is physically struggling like some grand slam tennis player. The energy seems to go everywhere, and not necessarily always focused on the music. The Brahms sounded like a chore.

The evening concluded with Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8, which provided a pleasant turn of events. After what seemed like another stiff opening, suddenly a switch flipped in the second movement and all the built up tension suddenly escaped. The players smiled and looked at one another, moving with the music in a more relaxed way. The romantic and evocative whorls of the third and fourth movement were warm and filled with a sense of camaraderie and the orchestra sounded assured and sizable throughout the remainder of the night. And while Masur may not have been bouncing around the stage while all this was going on, he did manage to lead the orchestra in a very heartfelt and wise performance of the Dvořák symphony. It took a little bit, but everybody finally got where they were going.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

Unsuk Chin

Is Joseph Pereira your favorite musician in the Los Angeles Philharmonic? Well if not, maybe he should be. He’s certainly one of my (many) favorites with a string of adventurous performances in the orchestra’s “Green Umbrella” new music series. Last year he appeared barefoot and shirtless to perform Vinko Globokar’s Corpore in which his own body was the primary instrument. Next season, Pereira, the L.A. Philharmonic's Principal Timpanist, will premiere his own Percussion Concerto in conjunction with the orchestra. But on Tuesday, he was again opening up a show in a solo percussion piece, this time digging around in a box filled with multi-colored tissue paper. The piece was Unsuk Chin’s Allegro ma non troppo, which starts with the sounds of crumpled and torn paper that are soon augmented by processed versions of the same sounds on tape. Soon Pereira added to the paper with ticking clocks, water drops, and feather dusters brushing against gongs. The piece comes full circle to the paper again in the end, but there is an increasing intensity throughout from the electronic overlay. This is what I have always loved about the L.A. Philharmonic, its adventurous musicians paired with equally adventurous music, be it their own or others.

It was a strong start to a show that featured both the works of Chin as well as those of Swedish composer Anders Hillborg. After the opening piece, two works from Hillborg followed. Vaporized Tivoli for a small ensemble mimicked the sounds and music associated with a carnival with loud raucous moments mixed with an increasing malevolence that later dissipates into nothing. (Hence the “Vaporized” of the title.) This carnival of sorts had much in common with the playful spirit of so much of Chin's music and seemed well suited with the rest of the evening's offerings. Following the intermission was the very sad, though intensely beautiful, string quartet entitled Kongsgaard Variations. The work was commissioned by California friends of the composer’s and takes off from two bars of Beethoven’s final Piano Sonata. And, although Hillborg never quotes Beethoven directly, he manages to produce music that maintains some of the dignity and clarity of Beethoven’s work in his own.

The big finish to the evening again belonged to Chin with her small ensemble work Cantatrix sopranica. Here the focus is on high voices, two sopranos and one countertenor. Some of the eight sections in the work mimic Baroque opera while others reproduce the sounds of the Chinese opera. The work featured soloists Kiera Duffy, Audrey Luna, and Michael Maniaci and was conducted by Benjamin Schwartz as was Hillborg's larger work on the program. Chin cannot resist the good jokes this setting allows as some of the "songs" that make up this cycle also included shrieks, giggles and the vocalists mimicking the vocal sounds of warming-up. It was all immense fun and a good reminder that contemporary music is not always grim sincerity and intellectual sparring.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

Thomas Adès Photo: Brian Voce

Be forewarned. The most important programming series of the 2010/2011 Los Angeles Philharmonic season is about to get underway. No it’s not the promised “unbinding” of Brahms to take place under Gustavo Dudamel in April and May with its rapidly disappearing number of new commissions that were to be paired with the composer’s major orchestra works. In fact, some of the most interesting music the orchestra members will likely play all year will take place as part of the “Aspects of Adès” series that was previewed on Monday night during a guest visit from the legendary Emerson Quartet. The L.A. Philharmonic has actively fostered an ongoing relationship with Adès, arguably one of the world’s most important living composers, welcoming him as both composer and conductor on numerous occasions. This season Adès takes on both roles in both his own as well as others' music. The series starts on April 1 with a weekend of performances of Adès’ In Seven Days with its accompanying video installation from Adès collaborator and partner Tal Rosner that was last seen here in May of 2008. In this concert it will be paired with Stravinsky’s Les noces and the Concerto for Two Pianos played by Katia and Marielle Labèque. Then on May 5 in conjunction with the L.A. Phil’s New Music Group, the composer will play his own piano paraphrase of his opera Powder Her Face and his Concerto Conciso alongside pieces from Ligeti and Nancarrow. The following weekend will bring two different programs. On May 7 and 8 Adès will lead the world premiere of the latest operatic work from Gerald Barry, a treatment of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Barry had a huge success in L.A. previously when Adès brought his The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit in 2006 and this return visit is a high priority. Adès’s visit with the L.A. Phil will conclude on April 9 with a single performance of his newest orchestra work Polaris again with video from Rosner paired with Messiaen’s Éclairs sur l’au-delà. It’s almost criminal that this final concert is a one-off performance (especially since I will be out of town for it), but you don’t have to miss out.

But before all of this, audiences got a sneak peak of “Aspects of Adès” in the strangest of places: an appearance by the Emerson String Quartet. Not that the esteemed quartet is an unusual ensemble for Adès’ music. But Adès new string quartet, The Four Quarters, was buried in perhaps the oddest of programs. The show also included Debussy’s String Quartet in G minor as well as a number of other works showcasing Sir James Galway on the flute. Galway is certainly no slouch, but the evening seemed to be reaching for pieces for the Emerson players and Galway to collaborate on including Mozart’s Flute Quartet in D major and Arthur Foote’s A Night Piece. Both of these provided Galway with plenty of room to show off his virtuosity as did Claude Debussy’s solo flute work, Syrinx. But the larger relationship between the flute works and Adès and Debussy music admittedly escaped me.

But any occasion for a new work from Adès is a worthwhile one, and The Four Quarters, which was receiving its West Coast premiere after a debut in New York the day before, continued to document this composer’s fascinating musical journey. The four movement quartet follows the course of a day opening from the rhythmic passing of notes between players in “Nightfalls” into the plucking pizzicato of “Morning Dew.” These were followed in succession by “Days” and finally “The Twenty-Fifth Hour,” which delivered progressively more and more complex time signatures and rhythmic elements. Despite all the fancy notation and complexity, the quartet, like much of Adès music, also manages to be rather accessible in a surprising way. The fact that the Emerson players are as seasoned as they are probably helps, of course. But if the mark of a successful new work is creating a desire to immediately hear it again in the listener, it was a winner in my book. It certainly seemed to provide an interesting complement to Debussy’s rich impressionism. Adès arrived to enthusiastic applause at the end of the performance of his quartet looking every bit the newly minted Angeleno in a black suit, bright red shirt, and sneakers. But while he may have looked every bit the unassuming composer, his impressive and important music bespeaks some exciting shows ahead.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

A friend of mine after hearing Gustavo Dudamel conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic recently asked me “What has happened to this orchestra? I don't know where they are headed anymore.” It’s true, the changes of the Dudamel era are afoot and as much as some critics would like you to believe that any differences in the orchestra between today and a couple of years ago are just a matter of different flavors of the same great stuff, this weekend’s program from Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic tells a much more unsettling story. It’s a story of lowered artistic ambitions and the incessant drumbeat of marketing over music. The show that kicked off the weekend was perhaps one of the most questionable programming concepts of the whole season. It included three orchestral “fantasies” by Tchaikovsky based on Shakespeare; Hamlet, The Tempest, and the ever-familiar Romeo and Juliet. Granted it's pretty music, but hardly what you’d call inspiring or thoughtful. It's also a program that is featured on the latest recording from Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra so that the same show has arrived here is no surprise.

To make matters worse, the increasingly star-struck management worked with Dudamel to create the musical equivalent of mutton dressed as lamb. Each of the three orchestra pieces was paired with a short, readily identifiable scene from each play with some bona fide Hollywood stars and all the dramatic lighting you could ask for. Matthew Rhys gave us a bit of the old “To be or not to be” in the requisite unbuttoned collar sans tie which always seems to signify an actor is trying to play the troubled, young Hamlet. Meanwhile Malcolm McDowell channeled both Hamlet’s father and Prospero with the assistance of a script. And in the final segment, Orlando Bloom’s Romeo accosted Anika Noni Rose’s Juliet from across the stage standing in the walkway between the front and middle orchestra sections. Much of the acting, which was directed by Kate Burton, was wooden and the scenes seemed somewhat pointless other than getting a chance to see a star in the flesh. The audience members seated behind the orchestra also got a fair glimpse of Bloom’s exposed midriff as he cavorted in his exhortations of love toward Juliet. And admittedly said midriff just about carried the whole evening which may be the intended effect for a show that will be broadcast to theaters nationwide on Sunday as part of the L.A. Phil Live series.

With so much else going on, it might have been possible to forget there was an orchestra concert going on, but indeed there was. In typical Dudamel fashion, the musical portion of the show was blown up out of proportion to the weight of work itself. The strings dug in and often sounded bright and lovely. There were big swelling moments that were quite dramatic. But there were just as many that were interminably overwrought and slow. It’s hard to imagine how a show with not much more than 60 minutes of music by Tchaikovsky could be so exhausting, but then Dudamel has a way of making even the most unassuming music beg for mercy. The show repeats through Sunday if you're up to it.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

Anton Bruckner, painted by Jerry Branton

Bruckner's music was everywhere this weekend. Probably the biggest disappointment of my 48 hours in Chicago was that I did not anticipate that Esa-Pekka Salonen would be substituting for an ailing Riccardo Muti with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra while I was in town. And so I missed out on Salonen leading Bruckner’s 7th Symphony. But I did have a ticket to see the same symphony here in L.A. on Sunday with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel so I got to hear the Bruckner anyway, although after the fact, I can't help but wonder if I had been better off with a few more hours in the Midwest. Like Mahler, Bruckner is a composer whose symphonic works tend to crumble without strict management of their many excesses not the least of which its length. It can be done, though, and was accomplished right here as recently as last May 2009 when Christoph Eschenbach led the L.A. Phil in the same piece with great success. But Dudamel has proven to have little inclination toward reigning things in musically even when it's called for; and much like his Mahler, this Bruckner symphony strained and moaned under unchecked impulses. Dudamel’s penchant for seeing all slow tempos as invitations to the dirge made the first two movements of the symphony stretch beyond plausible recognition Sunday, creating a sort of stupefying effect. Time stopped all right, in a bad way somewhere past the point of cohesive unity. Not that there wasn’t some lovely playing from the orchestra at times. The strings and brass both delivered big bold flourishes when they were called for, and Dudamel again proved he can manage an exciting crescendo here and there. But more often than not the symphony suffered from a turgid flow, which approached a state of suspended animation.

Bruckner was not the only composer on offer in this weekend’s program from the L.A. Philharmonic. As if looking for works as diametrically opposed to Bruckner’s 7th as possible, the orchestra played Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra and Takemitsu’s Requiem. These two pieces together occupy little more than 15 minutes of music and pack an awful lot of intensity in the most reserved of musical gestures. Both works, although informed by different musical traditions, are relatively quiet and subdued. These more constrained pieces provided far more engrossing music making and provided a startling counterpoint with what was to follow. Takemitsu’s sorrowful string meditation was lovely and far darker than any of the plodding Bruckner that followed. With less room to maneuver, the orchestra and Dudamel seemed more intent on the bigger picture of these works and neither was overworked in the same way as the mega symphony that laid in waiting.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11

Gaultier Capuçon Photo: Julien Mignot

I finally caught up with the Los Angeles Philharmonic this weekend for the first time since their return from their recent European tour. I was glad to see them back in town and particularly in the company of the organization’s young and very-talented Associate Conductor Lionel Bringuier. He’s in his fourth and final year in that position here, and I will be sad to see him go, having heard him lead so many fine performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall during his tenure. This weekend was another one of them. It wasn’t anything flashy or unusual but it was well played and led without an overabundance of demonstrative exuberance. The concert included major works from composers associated with 19th-century musical nationalism. And while both Bringuier and guest soloist Gautier Capuçon are both French, the music was predominantly Czech, including Smetana’s ubiquitous The Moldau and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 5. Opening the concert, the Smetana piece certainly invoked the watery movement associated with its title if not all of the nationalist spirit that comes with it. The Dvořák piece was well organized and developed by Bringuier with very fine playing all around. The symphony was composed at a time when Dvořák was becoming more interested in the folk music and traditions that would influence his later work. And while Bringuier may not have always brought out these influences to their fullest, it was hard to argue with this clear-headed rendition.

Given that the Dvořák Symphony No. 5 was a departure stylistically for the composer at the time, it couldn’t have been more appropriately paired with the Schumann cello concerto that was sandwiched in the middle of the show. Schumann’s richly lyrical work, which plays without pause between movements, is not all about showy finger work and virtuosity. It’s a deeper and more complicated work, which soloist Gaultier Capuçon gave a solid performance of. He was making the first of two appearances here this season. (The second of which will include his brother, violinist Renaud Capuçon and the equally dramatically coiffed Gustavo Dudamel in one of those new-fangled theater broadcasts in June during the "Brahms and More Brahms" festival.) The young photogenic Frenchman had a direct no-nonsense approach to the work, which was more admirable on an intellectual level than it was an emotional one to my ear. But maybe that is for the best in an evening filled with music of understated gestures.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 10/11