Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic wrapped up two weeks worth of concerts this weekend at Disney Concert Hall – shows they’ll soon take on the road to Lincoln Center in New York later this month. The shows were an encapsulation of all the things that are working, and most certainly those that aren’t, with today’s LA Phil. And they come on the heels of the orchestra’s announcement of its 2013/2014 season, the eleventh in the Walt Disney Concert Hall which will celebrate its 10th Anniversary in October and has rapidly set the standard for musical venues in the U.S. if not around the world.

The good news is that the LA Phil has maintained its commitment to contemporary music through a robust and active commissioning program and aggressive programming of a variety of 20th and 21st century sounds. This season and next suggest that the orchestra may be developing a stronger taste for young Americans than European modernists in the targets of their commissioning dollars, ruffling some feathers about the seriousness of it all, but this is really splitting hairs for the most part. Dudamel continues to seem like an ancillary figure in this part of the organization’s programming. He’s by no means absent from it, but his heart is more readily on display elsewhere with the tried and true such as Mahler and next year’s Tchaikovsky cycle, which will again feature contributions from the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. (“I love Tchaikovsky music like crazy’” says the maestro during the press conference announcing the season.) And while he won’t be on the podium for the LA Phil’s performance of Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels, which will mark the exact 10th Anniversary of the opening of WDCH, this past weekend he again helmed perhaps the biggest premiere of the orchestra’s tenure since the departure of former music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary.

Mary premiered in a concert version in the spring of 2012 to a surprised and somewhat bewildered audience. Another opera-cum-oratorio riffing on cornerstone genres of the Western Musical tradition, Mary was bigger than anticipated and much different from what one might expect from Adams, suggesting a new direction in his career and musical production. The sound was thornier, more dissonant, diffuse and far less eager to please. It built on the burgeoning fractured narratives in Adams’ larger vocal works developed alongside director Peter Sellars filling the Passion story with the struggle of mid-Century California farm workers and the incarcerated. Texts and language shift through a myriad of sources constructing a narrative that relies on the audience’s familiarity with the story in order to re-tell the tale.

This weekend, the LA Phil presented the work again with the same soloists from last year, Kelley O’Connor as the eponymous Mary, Tamara Mumford as her sister Martha, Russell Thomas as Lazarus and others, and a mini-chorus of countertenors – Daniel Bubeck, Brian Cummings, and Nathan Medley. The forces here are similar to those in El Nino but the music is markedly different relying less on percolating structures that repeat and blossom into grand gestures. Mary is still startling for what it is not and this time seemed more concentrated and directed in its goals. When Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener at the conclusion, it is both simultaneously heartbreaking and wonderful. It’s undoubtedly a landmark in the career of one of America’s most important living composers. If there was anything that wasn’t fresh and new in the performance, it was Sellars’ overly familiar semi-staging of events that took place at the foot of the stage. The vocalists were joined by three dancers who sometimes acted as doppelgangers and at others represented characters in their own right. Sellars is eager to draw connections between the characters and contemporary people, dressing everyone in various shades of faux denim and giving the chorus, in street clothes, a wee bit of their own choreography, adding to the shenanigans occurring in front of them. This is all highly familiar stuff from Sellars a this point in the game, particularly alongside his work with Adams, and tended to undercut the surprising innovation elsewhere in the performance.

But while the LA Phil showed off its newer music chops this weekend, the other program on their upcoming out-of-town bill was a far more mixed affair with several soft spots. The highlight of the prior weekend was a performance of Stravinsky’s complete music for The Firebird. This, of course, is the kind of thing Dudamel revels in, with lots of places for big, overstated gestures both in terms of noisy flourish and histrionic pacing. The slower sections dragged, but there was an unmistakably satisfying big finish to drive things home. Even if the finale felt disconnected from what preceded it, Dudamel managed to leave the audience believing they’d heard something, certainly with all the flash and fire. But pull out the show-stoppers and he continues to struggle under the weight of over-processed and mannered musicality. Debussy’s La mer, which closed the first half of the first program, was nothing short of a mess. Splashing about here and there left the musicians drowning in this rocky sea, and an overall lack of line and connection between component parts made the performance hollow and empty. Vivier’s Zipangu opened the first evening with its eerie overtones meant to evoke the Japanese music the title alludes to in 15 minutes of shifting colors. The piece felt dead in Dudamel’s hands less colorful and more disjointed and academic. Like the Debussy the overall picture and feel of the work was lost in a series of overworked and disconnected moments. Of course, all of this may sound more worked out when the orchestra hits the road, but it still suggests that despite the many great things about the LA Phil under Dudamel, few of them stem from his own musicality.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 12/13

Friday brought the latest frustration in what has been one of the most unexpectedly disappointing Los Angeles Philharmonic seasons in recent memory. Great nights with the LA Phil at Walt Disney Concert Hall have been few and far between lately, and Friday’s program under Pablo Heras-Casado featuring the works of 20th-century Hungarian Composers was one of the biggest let-downs yet. The centerpiece of the evening was the world premiere of a new commission from Peter Eötvös, a violin concerto entitled DoReMi written for Midori. Eötvös has been featured around town all week and his appearances here were some of the most anticipated of the year. And yet not unlike Tuesday’s concert staging of his Angels in America, DoReMi fell far short of its promise. The single movement work does capture a playful spirit as suggested in the title – one concerned with the basic building blocks of music composition. Eötvös is taking a wry wink at the relationship between these most elemental of tones. This playfulness is also reflected in the way other members of the orchestra often share or swap the solo material in various asides or outright duos passed to and between the ostensible soloist Midori and the Concertmaster or even the Principal Violist. At first I wondered if Midori, not a name that leaps to mind when thinking of contemporary music, was picked at random for this project through some new violin concerto generation software. But her virtuosity is never to be taken lightly and she flew into one thorny discordant passage after the next. She clearly dug in with wild swings bouncing to and fro off the other orchestral elements.

Yet oddly, all of this playfulness never amounted to much joy. The piece came off mechanical and frequently muddy. There was a homogeneity to it all as well that left one wanting for a bit more development or direction. Of course, part of the problem here may rest in the hands of Heras-Casado. Despite some exemplary outings with the L.A. Phil in the past, his assails of Kodály’s Háry János Suite and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra were wanting. There were moments of lush sound, but an edge was missing in both. No hint of folk or ethnic influences here. Instead both works wandered without focus or much direction with the same muddy sound-constrained dynamic range. What should have been a barn-burner was instead reduced to a little night music. And for the lions of 20th-century Hungarian music, that is not enough. Not by a long shot.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 12/13

So, after being on hiatus, how do I get started again? I say just jump right back in.

Opera composers have long relied on stage plays as a source of dramatic material. It seems a natural choice: take something stage worthy to begin with and set it to music. What could possible go wrong? On occasion composers have even taken the text of a play as a libretto in and of itself, though more often than not they use an adapted version of a text for their own music dramas. It’s as true now as ever, and a recent visit to Los Angeles by Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös reminded us that these stage-to-stage endeavors are rarely as uncomplicated as they might seem. On Tuesday night, the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group under its “Green Umbrella” series gave the local premiere of Eötvös’ version of Angels in America, the landmark multiple award winning two-part drama from Tony Kushner. The opera received its world premiere in Paris in 2004 and has been seen in several different venues both in America and abroad. It has undergone many changes and re-orchestrations over the last decade from a small predominantly electronic instrument-based ensemble to the larger chamber orchestra-sized one that appeared in Los Angeles this week as part of a series of events Eötvös is participating in here this week.

In some ways this is asking for trouble. Angels in America is a play a lot of art loving folks here hold near and dear to their hearts, particularly here in Los Angeles where the play first stumbled forth onto the stage of the Mark Taper Forum. Gay men of a certain age view Kushner’s play as their play in a sense – or at least a highly biographical take on their own lives and communities in the not so distant past. But an opera, even a long one, can’t absorb all seven hours of Kushner’s miraculous, wordy wonder, and like composers before him, Eötvös had to make some hard choices, which he did with Kushner’s assistance and that of librettist Mari Mezel. What's left is a peculiarly non-American take on the most American of plays with much of the political context stripped away. Some grumbling was to be expected with such a devoted audience, but the grumbling seemed fair even beyond the devotion of an audience for the original work. Angels in America in this instance is as disappointing as often as it isn’t.

The problem lies in Eötvös’s focus almost exclusively on the magical realism in the piece. He is enamored with the hallucinogenic, fantastical dream sequences of the play from Prior Walter’s wrestling with the Angel to Roy Cohn’s extended dialogues with Ethel Rosenberg. They are undoubtedly some of the strongest moments in the play, and they are well served with Eötvös modernist dark discordant score. Sadly though a single piece of theater, the work falters without a clear overarching framework. Understandably cuts have been made, but it feels like they have been made again and again in the wrong places. Scenes are kept for the beauty of their language or their profound sentiment, but necessary connecting narrative elements are too easily lost, creating confusion in the final act as to exactly how things got to the point they have. Worse yet, Eötvös’ monochromatic score cuts against the proceedings as often as it seems to drive the action forward. Angels in America turns out to be as didactic as an opera as it is a play. But while that works on stage, it fails overall in the concert hall.

Musically, the members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and their guests availed themselves of this score, which featured both acoustic and electric instruments as well as amplified voices, expertly. Pablo Heras-Casado served as the conductor as he will for the world premiere of Eötvös’ new Violin Concerto written for Midori this coming weekend. He kept things well coordinated and relatively fleet for such a wordy libretto. Measha Brueggergosman appeared as the angel and gave a lusty, visceral performance as a supernatural creature in a sea of human neurosis and pain. David Adam Moore’s Prior Walter was the center of the large eight-person cast and handled singing about erections when it was called for with a believable ease. There’s as much spoken dialogue in the show as sung text and the cast included many other fine vocalists such as Julia Migenes and Janice Hall. All of the eight vocal actors on stage were joined by three other vocalists: Jamie Jordan, Abigail Fischer, and everyone’s favorite local barihunk Abdiel Gonzalez who provided layering and augmentation to the individual sung lines throughout in a sort of mini mirror chorus. It was one of Eötvös’ most clever and resounding musical effects in an evening that often provided drama and more than a little magic. Even if it did so at the expense of delivering a unified dramatic whole.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 12/13

The Los Angeles Philharmonic and music director Gustavo Dudamel returned to their winter home at the Walt Disney Concert Hall this very hot weekend to open up the 2012/2013 season. I’ve always found these initial performances of the fall season a little unsteady over the years. There’s something about the move that while relieving in the acoustic sense, still feels unsettled like everyone is getting back to the way things ideally should be with the better programming and better sound that audiences have been starving for all summer. This year was no exception, but it was a particularly unsatisfactory weekend for Dudamel and the Philharmonic. In fact, this weekend’s show, which I caught on Sunday, may have been the worst single performance I’ve heard him and the orchestra give together over his musically erratic, artistically lackluster tenure as music director here in L.A.

Of course, part of the reason for this may have been the works programmed for the occasion, which included Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, a work that served as the calling card for the orchestra under former music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, and one they recorded together to some acclaim. Those very familiar interpretations were well known to virtually all regular members of the L.A. Philharmonic’s regular audience. And certainly a different interpretive style is natural and to be expected. But Dudamel’s take on this landmark of the 20th Century fell short in virtually every way imaginable. Gone was the percussive, rhythmic dance sense of the piece. Gone was the brisk, ferocious aggressiveness grabbing at your throat and the sharp edged clarity and uniformity cultivated by the orchestra – the sound that in part had catapulted them to the forefront of world orchestras for their performances of 20th Century works. Instead Dudamel led the orchestra through a performance that had some animalistic qualities, but was disorganized and confused often to the point of cacophony. Gone was the sense of rhythm and timing with Dudamel’s trademark indulgent and inexplicable tempi. The sound went in all directions, at once blunting the force of the performance and leaving one perplexed as to what the point was. This was not a Rite that sounded like the harbinger of the 20th Century, but one that was lost wandering in a disorganized sea of noise.

The rest of the evening fared little better. The show started with a lifeless and cold tour through Ravel’s Pavane pour une infant défunte. This did little to pave the way for the world premiere of a new work from longtime L.A. Philharmonic collaborator composer Steven Stucky whose 20 minute single movement Symphony rounded out the first half of the evening. The work was of a similar structure to his prior Radical Light and Silent Spring in format with contrasting material that waxes and wanes from a more subdued entrance the composer refers to as “peaceful” to contrasting moments more reflective of turmoil. The piece isn’t programmatic in any way as Stucky himself insists, but instead relies on a series of orchestra gestures execute with flair by Dudamel and the players. But it was hard to get behind the piece with much excitement when the overall feeling was that the music was somehow resting in the background of something else. Granted the work didn’t get shown in the best of lights sandwiched between two musical debacles as it was, so further listening is warranted. But in the meantime, one can only hope that as in year’s past, the show that opens the regular weekend programming of the fall season for the L.A. Phil is not the standard bearer for the year to come but a transition period from which much greater things will happen.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 12/13

Not unlike Regis Philbin, I'm only one man. I can't be everywhere and was sorry to have missed the Los Angles Philharmonic's performances this weekend which featured a new work from composer James Matheson. Luckily man-about-town and bon-vivant Ben Vanaman stepped up to fill in the gaps with this report on Friday's performance.

Friday night was “Casual Friday” at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which is perhaps why Walt Disney Concert Hall sounded even more than usual like a tubercular ward, a chorus of hacking coughs providing an unwelcome accompaniment to the sounds emanating from the stage. In any event, this being “Casual Friday,” the Philharmonic players were dressed in jeans and flannel. When asked about his experience of participating in a “Casual Friday” concert during a talk-back that followed the truncated program (Beethoven’s “Egmont” overture, to be performed on Saturday and Sunday, was not part of this evening’s bill), the talented young conductor Pablo Heras-Casado who led the orchestra opined that the laid-back nature of the evening made the performance seem to him like a dress rehearsal. Well, exactly. If you’re a business executive and wear a suit and tie to work, you feel like an executive. Similarly, the wearing of formal attire surely abets an orchestra’s performance while giving its concerts a feeling of occasion, a quality that sometimes seemed lacking tonight.

In particular, the opening piece, a new violin concerto by James Matheson that was co-commissioned by the Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, felt slightly under-rehearsed. The concerto itself, however, was a dizzying ride, particularly in the frenetic opening movement (labeled Caprice) –with its swirling musical iterations- and the sprightly closing movement, titled Dance. Linking the outer movements was an intense, heartfelt chaconne that, like the rest of the work, gave the violin soloist a considerable workout (e.g. lots of double stops). The soloist on this occasion was the Philharmonic’s Principle Concertmaster Martin Chalifour, a musician I remain somewhat ambivalent about. His playing is technically adroit, but his tone can sound thin and reedy to me, a problem that besets the orchestra’s violin sections in general in my opinion, although I give consideration to the Philharmonic’s new music director Gustavo Dudamel for trying to summon a richer, deeper, and more burnished sound from the upper strings.

The orchestra has the good fortune, however, to have lured Chicago Symphony violinist Nathan Cole to become its First Associate Concertmaster. Cole’s extended solo in the program’s second offering –Richard Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben”- was the highlight of the evening. He produces a beautiful, textured, achingly lyrical sound, and one hopes that someday he’ll be given the opportunity to be the featured soloist during one of the orchestra’s concerts. The Strauss also benefitted from the brio of Heras-Casado’s reading of the score. This “Heldenleben” really felt like a hero’s journey, gathering up in a cohesiveness that is sometimes missing from Dudamel’s interpretations of Romantic and late-Romantic period staples.

Joining Heras-Casado in the post-concert talk-back was composer Matheson, soloist Chalifour, and the Philharmonic’s brassy President, Deborah Borda, who moderated the brief, informal discussion. While the participants gave thoughtful and intelligent responses to questions from Ms. Borda and the audience, the moment that I remember most vividly was when Ms. Borda opined that she actually likes the applause that sometimes erupts following individual movements of concerti and symphonies because it indicates to her that the Philharmonic is reaching “new” audiences (“new” I’m guessing being primarily a euphemism for “young”). Never mind that such applause disrupts the continuity of performance or displays a lack of respect for the compositional integrity of the work being performed, but for an orchestra administrator to encourage such behavior rather than seizing the opportunity of a teachable moment in an attempt to thwart it is unbelievably appalling. All I could think of on the way home was this: where is Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine when you need it the most?

Labels: LA Philharmonic 12/13

Music lovers in Los Angeles got an earful of the near future this week as two of our major local companies announced what they hope to bring to the stages over the next year a half. Both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Opera revealed seasons that contained surprises both good and bad. The Los Angeles Philharmonic unveiled their most exciting post-Salonen season to date with more great evenings on offer than I care to count. I for one have spent a lot of time fretting on these pages about the orchestra’s commitment to new and recent music in the last few seasons. And while there are few things in the world that are likely to shut me up, this upcoming season prospectus has.

Where to begin? The most exciting event is undoubtedly a week of programming in January 2013 devoted to Peter Eötvös whose opera Angels in America will be presented as part of the Green Umbrella series with, among others, Measha Brueggergrosman as Harper Pitt. Later that week Eötvös will premiere a new violin concerto written for Midori with both evenings conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado. And then there are a pair of programs in April featuring works by several of the much talked about cadre of young composers currently living and working in Brooklyn. Alan Pierson will lead an evening of works by Samuel Adams, Tyondai Braxton, and Matt Marks to be followed that weekend by a new work from Ted Hearne. Meanwhile, Esa-Pekka Salonen will return to the house he built in November for two weeks of programs featuring his own music as well as that of Lutoslawski, Bruckner, and Magnus Lindberg. Of course the hottest ticket with Salonen’s name on it may actually be his one-night-only appearance with his new outfit, the Philharmonia Orchestra, who’ll perform a concert version of Wozzeck on Nov. 13.

Of course, John Adams will be in town leading another Green Umbrella Program including work from Nico Muhly and Icelandic composer Daniel Bjarnason on the 16th of October. And as much as I’ve not been a big fan of music director Gustavo Dudamel, he will have a significant hand in the new(er) music programming this year with such works occupying nearly a third of his over two dozen appearances. He’ll lead a new commission from Unsuk Chin as well as Oliver Knussen’s treatment of Where the Wild Things Are. He’ll also open the season with a new work from Steven Stucky and reprise this coming spring’s performances of Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary but with a full staging directed by Peter Sellars the second time around. There are many big stars and plenty of wonderful old music, as well that I won’t go through here, but the Countess of Dorothea Röschmann opposite Christopher Maltman in the company’s concert version of Le Nozze di Figaro in May is an absolute highlight.

With all of this good fortune across the street, it’s hard not to be disappointed by one of the softest Los Angeles Opera seasons in years, which was announced by General Director Placido Domingo on Thursday. (In fact taking the four operas mentioned above plus performances of Falla's La vida breve under Fruhbeck de Burgos with the L.A. Phil and you already have a superior opera season to what LAO has planned.) I suppose the glass-half-full way to look at things is that after some tough economic times, L.A. still has an operational opera company producing quality work and is managing to resolve its debts. The casting is reasonable and the season will kick off with the unquestionable highlight of the year, a new production of Verdi’s I Due Foscari with maestro Domingo doing his baritone trick for the second time in L.A. in 2012 in a new role for him. James Conlon will conduct four of the six productions again including Foscari as well as less ambitious Wagner (Der Fliegende Hollander), and requsite bel canto (La Cenerentola). The other half of the company's 36 performances however will be dedicated to three operas they have overly relied upon over the last decade: Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Tosca both of which were last seen in 2008 and Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which last appeared in December of 2007. To their credit, none of the season's operas will be seen in prodcutions Los Angeles has staged before, but its hard to see the attraction in these plans for longer-standing subscribers who will udnoutedly be struck with a been-there, done-that feeling. With only six operas on the budgetarily constricted schedule, every show carries more weight and while these six operas might seem like a good basis for an 8 opera season, they seem like boilerplate introduction to opera fare as the only six.

But perhaps the bigger question facing the company isn’t just finances or programming, but what this season might suggest about the company’s near future. Given that the contracts of both Placido Domingo and music director James Conlon expire in 2013 the questions remains whether or not this schedule is exit music for the current administration, or if it’s an economic blip for an organization that has abandoned plans as quickly as they’ve made them around the operas of Benjamin Britten or James Conlon's "Recovered Voices" project. Hopefully the new season will seem attractive to new audience members who may be drawn by works they've heard of and a new pricing scheme that makes more affordable seats available than ever before.

Labels: LA Opera 12/13, LA Philharmonic 12/13