Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

It couldn’t have been a more fitting ending; though, in fact, it wasn’t really an ending at all. It was actually one of those nights where we sit up and notice the little way the world changes around us. We take that moment to think about what and who we love and respect and take a moment to note it before moving on. The moment was the end of Jeffrey Kahane’s 20-year tenure as Music Director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in a pair of concerts that closed LACO’s 2016/2017 season. Kahane isn’t really moving on, of course, and will continue to be a fixture in future seasons with the ensemble who named him Conductor Laureate. Nevertheless, he is stepping down from his former position, and LACO continues their search for a new Music Director. There were many lovely commemorations from the musicians, board members, and administrators. What came through most clearly was the deep love and respect these artists all have for one another. Kahane has not only been a superb artist but a noble, moral human being in his time with the orchestra, using his artistry to do more than entertain but also to do what is right and good. He’s demonstrated that keenly in this past season when he’s spoke passionately from the stage about the times weʼre living in as well as in his moving performances of the recent Lift Every Voice Festival.

As for the program this weekend, the tone was perhaps less grand, but certainly no less moving. It was an evening that encapsulated so much of the great things of Kahane’s time with LACO. He began by conducting Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 from the keyboard. Kahane has made a specialty out of these concertos during his time at LACO, presenting cycles of all of them during his tenure here. It’s clearly some of the most touching moments to his artistic collaborators and it couldn’t have been more warmly received. This segued into the world premiere of a new piece from composer Christopher Cerrone, Will There Be Singing. LACO has been a force for commissioning new music in a town that thrives on new music and it was fitting that this transitional evening was no different from so many of the last 20 years. Cerrone has garnered much attention recently including a Pulizter nomination for his opera Invisible Cities which will see a DVD release this year. Will There Be Singing features waves of tinkling, chiming sound that is left hanging in the air as it slowly degrades before the next wave crashes. Cerrone described the work as being focused on this aural degradation of tones. Despite this dark sounding premise, however, the atmosphere is bright and sparkling in the piece. All of this led to a rousing turn through Schubert’s Symphony No. 9. It was a big week for the Schubert symphonies as the Los Angeles Philharmonic also closed its Schubert symphony cycle on Sunday. But here the feeling was different. LACO and Kahane gave the work a warm, connected, and intimate feeling. The kind you might have with the closest of colleagues and friends. It couldn’t have come at a better time.

Labels: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra

For a second weekend, protests raged across America and for a second weekend the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s serendipitously timed “Left Every Voice” festival promoting peace and reconciliation carried on to its ambitious, poignant conclusion. LACO, in collaboration with UCLA’s CAP program, director Anne Bogart, and members of the SITI Company revived Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s Lost in the Stars for two performances at Royce Hall. The musical has been revived periodically since its 1949 debut on Broadway, but it has never been the most familiar of Weil’s works - which is a shame considering the richness of the score and material. The show is a stage adaptation of Alan Baton’s apartheid era novel Cry, The Beloved Country. It concerns a black Anglican priest who has gone to find his son in the city of Johannesburg only to find he has fallen into a variety of sins including the eventual murder of a white friend of another family from the priest’s village. It’s stirring stuff and the themes are ones dear to Weill’s heart. But the music harkens to other influences including what Weill identified as Zulu tribal music.

The story covers a lot of ground even if it does go to predictable places for a contemporary audience. But it was hard not to admire the sheer ambition and effort that all parties had put into the production. Jeffrey Kahane and the LACO players were forceful and gave a real edge to the score. It was a similar approach to their performances of Weill from last week and it provided a counterweight to Bogart’s sometimes slow and often ritualistic staging. The large cast operated in a sparsely decorated space that relied heavily on lighting to evoke its sense of place. Anchoring the cast were two excellent performances from Justin Hopkins as the priest, Steven Kumalo, and Lauren Michelle as Irina, his son’s now pregnant partner. Michelle appeared alone on stage for her big solo numbers but she easily carried those moments that were by far the most riveting of the entire evening.

The eventual reconciliation of the story may seem comparatively easy to an audience facing the current political climate that Sunday night’s was. But it was a message of hope that is sorely needed right now. And LACO should be commended for the ambition of the endeavor, perhaps one of the biggest undertakings the orchestra has made in years.

Labels: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra wrapped up its orchestral season this weekend with a notable concert that set the stage for a very big season to come. Next fall will mark the start of Music Director Jeffrey Kahane’s 20th and final season with the orchestra and by the sounds of things this weekend, he’s leaving the ensemble in very fine form with promising times ahead. One of those legacies is LACO’s Sound Investment program where patrons contribute directly for newly commissioned works from young composers selected by Kahane. The program’s recipients are a who’s who of young American composers, and the latest work in the series received its premiere this weekend. The composer is Matthew Aucoin whose name is associated with just about every major American classical music organization these days. He’s received commissions from the Lyric Opera of Chicago and The Metropolitan Opera, and he was recently appointed artist-in-residence with the Los Angeles Opera as well as one of the Dudamel conducting fellows with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. (He'll conduct Glass' Akhnaten for LAO in the fall.) Somewhere in there, he found time to compose a fifteen-minute or so, single movement work for LACO, Evidence, that received its world premiere on Saturday under his own direction. The three-sectioned “journey” has interesting moments and promised much greater things. Aucoin clearly has a grasp of operatic scale and the language of the 20th Century musical landscape. This comparatively small chamber work busted at the seems with gestures better suited for a larger scale but any work that leaves you wanting more is a worthwhile one, and the crowd seemed excited with what they’d heard.

But Aucoin wasn’t the only notable guest this weekend, and the highlight of the night belonged to pianist Marc-André Hamelin who performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 with Kahane and the orchestra. This is an early staple of Mozart’s keyboard works, but Hamelin never does anything in the most conventional way, and this LACO performance was no exception. Hamelin’s cadenzas built subtly and what started out as a little jaunt soon became a roving, wandering beauty. He veered off and away in a grand manner that didn’t come off as jarring or inappropriate but made it clear that this was a beautiful and thoughtful adventure. After the meditative glories of the second movement subsided the third arrived almost as an alarm reminding the audience that we were, in fact, not entirely removed from where we started. It was daring, beautiful playing. Hamelin followed it up with jazz-influenced Gershwin that made sure the point wasn’t lost. It was a bold and surprising performance from one the piano greats of our times. The night ended with Kahane giving a polished rendition of Schumann’s Symphony No. 2. It was a lovely way to end an evening and a penultimate season.

Labels: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra

So what happened while I was away? Next we hear from OWA's editor and musical consultant Jeffrey Langham on Gabriel Kahane's return to the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra stage on Saturday night.

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra was at the Alex Theater in Glendale Saturday night, April 21, for a program, as musical director Jeffrey Kahane announced from the stage, devoted to music composed to evoke a "sense of place." Indeed, all three pieces mention places in their titles, but two pieces in particular, Ive's Three Places in New England and Gabriel Kahane's Crane Palimpsest stood out as stunning exemplars whereas Haydn's Symphony No. 104, the "London," was apparently the carrot dangled at the other end of the intermission to lure the regulars back to their seats. It would have suited me better to have my vegetables first and finish the evening with the real treats.

The first half of the program was dedicated to the two American pieces. From the stage, Jeffrey Kahane offered some insight by comparing the Ives with Gabriel Kahane's project, noting that Three Places could also be considered a palimpsest* in light of its layering of musical textures.  It is broken up into three sections, each focusing on a particular place in New England. The first section, "The 'Saint-Gaudens' in Boston Common," recalls the monument dedicated to Colonel Shaw and his all black regiment who fought for the Union in the Civil War. The Chamber Orchestra's playing was stirringly plaintive, still lingering into the second section, "Putnam's Camp, Reading, Connecticut." It is perhaps this section most of all that that may have led Jeffrey Kahane to consider Three Places a palimpsest. It is a multilayered slice of American musical idioms, at times martial, recalling the bands on a warm Fourth of July in the park, all playing over and through each other, in a convincing American turn at the Bakhtinian carnivalesque: the awesome heteroglossia that Ives hears and shares of his own New England. The final section, "The Housatonic at Stockbridge," pulls us away from the town and into the musical landscape of the countryside, the ethereal sounds of the river underscoring the other musical offerings from a lovers walk that Ives successfully captures. The orchestra under Kahane was hardly at a handicap with this material and played the Ives with great warmth without losing their attention to detail.

Gabriel Kahane gave an enchanting solo performance in his own composition, Crane Palimpsest, with his father leading the orchestra. The work which was receiving its West Coast premiere, is a love letter to the Brooklyn Bridge, drawing from Hart Crane's poem as the primary text upon which Kahane layers his own textual response both to Crane and to the borough itself. Here, Kahane as performer plays both guitar and piano while singing with orchestral accompaniment. He is a consummate performer, and his heady confusion of vocal styles worked perfectly to reinforce the thematic project of his piece. Again, the orchestra proved themselves well above the task of handling such challenging material. They appeared to flourish outside of their comfort zone and seemed to enjoy the opportunity to prove they are not just about the chamber music canon. The audience was enthusiastic at the conclusion, so much so that Gabriel Kahane returned to the stage for an encore, playing the title track from his latest album "Where are the Arms."

Coming back from the intermission for the Haydn seemed like a superfluous exercise. Yes, the orchestra played wonderfully under Jeffrey Kahane's assured hand. It was not a dry affair. The second and third movements, especially, came to life, reminding us why Haydn was the toast of the town when it was first performed in 1795 in London's Haymarket. Yet, despite the beautiful execution, the final piece on the program was a real thematic stretch. Both the Ives and the Kahane were personal meditations, engagements with the places that fed them musically. The London Symphony, on the other hand, only references the place where it was performed. Rather, it is supposed to recall for a late 18th-century London audience the land where Haydn came from, not where he was visiting. If the Croatian folk motif in the final movement is any indication, a land as far away from London as possible.

*Google it.

Labels: LA Music Reviews, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra

If there is anything that’s been reinforced to me lately, it’s that conflict, real or manufactured, seems to draw people’s attention. Even in the field of classical music, the whiff of a cross-country rivalry between Los Angeles and New York serves to do all kinds of things. It’s a marketing strategy for music festivals, and it’s an idea that certainly sells whatever it is big media conglomerates still sell these days the way it crops up again and again in the writing of people who should know better. I was reminded of this on Saturday when I heard a story regarding one of L.A.'s most prominent public writers on all things classical music. Allegedly after hearing a new composition from a young ex-Los Angeles based composer who now resides in Brooklyn, the writer was purported to have remarked about how the composer has “gone soft” now that he works in the apparently toxic confines of Brooklyn. You see, every time you insult New York in Los Angeles, an agent gets his wings.

But luckily, local artists of the musical variety at least are having none of this garbage as evidenced by two local programs that mostly celebrated the connection between themselves and their peers on the East Coast albeit in different ways. What’s more, Brooklyn-based composer Timothy Andres’ music featured prominently in both. Andres was the star attraction at this weekend’s Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra concert, which I saw Sunday in its Westwood incarnation. Andres was commissioned as part of the group’s Sound Investment program with donations from individual audience members to bring new work to life. Andres was this year’s choice, and the result was a remarkably interesting 13-minute piano concerto entitled Old Keys. The single movement highlighted Andres' familiarity with 20th-century American music history, but had an accessibility that brought later John Adams immediately to my mind. And while the piano part, which Andres played himself, was no virtuosic tour de force, it subtly achieved its own greatness fully integrating itself within the context of the larger orchestration. This was not the usual individual-vs-society concerto model but something far more nuanced. As Andres' himself pointed out, it's a restless piece constantly on the move, looking for something though not necessarily in an agitated way. If there was any complaint, it was that the piece ended far too quickly as if it were only the first movement of some larger, much more ambitious work.

Andres didn’t completely pass on the virtuosity, however. He followed Old Keys with his recomposition of Mozart’s Piano Concerto, No. 26. As music director and conductor Jeffrey Kahane pointed out before the performance, it is not a well-loved piece by many soloists. This is in part due to the fact that Mozart didn’t write out the music for pianist's left hand which Mozart himself likely improvised on the spot or played from his own memory in performance. Other composers have had a stab at fleshing this sizable gap out, but Andres took a radically different approach, creating a related but completely independent part not intended to conform or mimic Mozart’s style. The result is fiendish to play and nearly schizophrenic, the right hand almost unaware at times of what the left is doing. The orchestra speaks to the soloist as if through a translator or across time in something that feels contemporary in a twisted sort of way. Just to put a point on it, Andres played his piano transcription of Mahler’s “Des Antionius von Paduas Fischpredigt” from Des Knaben Wunderhorn as an encore. He left no doubt in this room that he’s a major talent with some incredible music yet to come.

All this bi-coastal good feeling served as a template for the young upstart wildUp collective that returned to Venice’s Beyond Baroque this past Friday and Saturday. The theme was a mocking nod to a N.Y. vs L.A. rivalry with the ensemble playing pieces predominantly from young composers working in either city. The intent wasn’t so much to draw a contrast as it was to point out similarities in two burgeoning music scenes. In the best ironic twist of all, music director Christopher Rountree, who contributed a piece based on Walt Whitman’s ”Brooklyn,” was absent from the show except by pre-taped message as he was in that very same borough this weekend helping out with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. See how easy that was? And nobody had to get off a high horse to do it no less.

Andres’s music featured prominently here as well with the group playing several chamber-sized pieces, many of which had previously been heard as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Green Umbrella” new music series. The impressive pianist Richard Valittuto showed that Andres is not the only one who’s capable of making How Can I Live in Your World of Ideas? sound great. Andres’ Ives-inspired Some Connecticut Gospel was also in the first half of the program and was played with as much New England pluck as you could wish from any ensemble. Andrew Tholl revisited Missy Mazzoli’s solo violin piece via Bach, Dissolve, O My Heart, and participated in the violin octet that gave the juice to Andrew Norman’s Gran Turismo. Norman will be taking over the composer in residence spot at LACO starting next season so local audiences will hopefully to get to hear more of this kind of great music. These pieces bristled with invention, all very inviting, and, from the look of things, as fun to play as to hear.

The Los Angeles part of the program kicked off with a comical piece from Art Jarvinen, Egyptian Two-Step, that made ample use of the hissing from compressed air canisters with the players breaking out in smiles as wide as the audience's. From here things got a bit more serious with Odeya Nini's Shelter in Swarm, Andrew McIntosh’s Silver and White and Andrew Tholl’s Corpus Callosum, which all showed the markings of European modernism. I was perhaps most taken with Rountree’s Brooklyn, which provided chamber accompaniment to a pre-recorded reading of Whitman’s poem. Whitman’s language is as stunning as Ives’ music and Rountree craftily follows along matching the emotional fervency in the building vision of a city from the water. It was all very exciting stuff in large part due to the commitment and excitement of the players. Granted, sometimes that excitement cut into their ability to sell the music in a serious fashion with a rotating roster of emcees for the show who were too inclined toward a little humorous self-deprication, which can go a long way; more than that goes way too far. But better this than something boring, which wildUp never is. Again proving that, yes, we can all get along and have a good time without highlighting our divisions to do so. Who would have guessed?

Labels: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, wildup

Los Angeles loves young fresh faces. And when they come with talent to match, sparks can fly. Which may just happen again later this month when the not-yet-30-year-old composer and pianist Timothy Andres arrives in Los Angeles for two high-profile performances with two very different local organizations. Andres is a fast-rising star in the musical world having already had his work included in programming from the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009, the year before he released his debut recording, Shy and Mighty, on the Nonesuch label. Press has been glowing, and new commissions are coming fast and furious making his upcoming L.A. appearances a high priority for anyone interested in the next generation of American composers. His music will be included in the latest program from wildUp, L.A.’s new music collective, who’ll consider current music scenes on the East and West Coast on the 23rd and 24th of March at Beyond Baroque in Venice. And on an even bigger note, he’ll appear with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra under Jeffrey Kahane on the 24th and 25th of March playing his completion of the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 26 as well as his new piano concerto, Old Keys, a commission of the group’s Sound Investment program. Not excited yet? You should be. Prior to all this, Out West Arts was lucky enough to get Timo to take a stab at the ever popular 10 Questions.

1. How important is contemporary technology to your creative process?
   

   
   I have trouble separating the "creative" process from the day-to-day "getting notes down" process. For me, they mostly happen at the same time; it's not very glamorous. I almost always work directly into Sibelius. I've been composing on computers since I was a kid, so it feels natural. Occasionally I'll start with an audio mockup in Logic. The only thing I'll do by hand is the very outset of writing a piece, sitting at the piano and improvising and occasionally jotting down incomprehensible little notes to myself.
   
   That's in addition to all the other things computers help to do: recording, editing, playing random keyboard instruments, doing all my design and layout, doing my website, exchanging scores and recordings with fellow musicians—I even read most music off my iPad now, so there are pitiably few hours in a day that I'm not in front of some sort of screen.



2. What’s your current obsession?
   

   
   It's not one that I would have anticipated even a couple of years ago, and that is men's clothing. Out of school I dressed like any number of Liberal Arts College Graduates—that is to say, in striped t-shirts and skinny jeans. When I moved to New York I found myself in a meeting at my record label or something, and all of a sudden it was—I feel like a child right now, and not in a good way. Also around that time a friend of mine bought me a really beautiful jacket, and I realized I had not a single thing in my wardrobe that wouldn't look ridiculous alongside such a garment, so that started me down the path. Now I spend most of my free time trawling eBay or thrift shops, searching for, I don't know, the perfect houndstooth bow tie or something equally foppish.
   
   There are a number of other things I waste time on including bicycles, cooking, and repeatedly cleaning all surfaces in the apartment.



3. You’ll be performing alongside the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra on March 24 and 25 in a program that will feature a new commission from you for them, a piano concert entitled Old Keys. What should we know about the piece before hand?
   

   
   Here are some things you should know about Old Keys: it's an uncharacteristically neurotic piece for me, full of little details and inflections. It's a piano concerto but only in outward appearance; the piano part is not flashy or even that difficult. The entire thing is basically stitched together out of transitions, or at least each section is agitating to move on to the next; it never sits still and just contents itself with one or two things.

4. That same weekend, L.A.’s young, fresh family of musicians wildUp will feature your music in a program playing off an imagined East Coast vs West Coast composer rivalry. Can’t we all just get along?
   

   
   Yes and no. West coasters, in my experience, tend to be genuinely open minded, which is so great. If there's rivalry it is solely between the East coast and its own self.
   
   Over here, critics and curators love to repeat that old saw about how today's young composers have no stylistic limitations, how we just "let it all hang out" all of the time, but in reality things are much more like that old Tom Lehrer song "National Brotherhood Week"—everyone comes out to Miller or Merkin to hear their friend's piece and puts on a friendly face for precisely as long as is needed ("be grateful that it doesn't last all year!"). At one of these things someone asked me if I was an "uptown or downtown" composer, which… just… never ask anyone that.
   
   Competition among composers is a funny thing. If you're, say, a violinist and you bomb an audition, it's easy to say "I had an off day" or "so and so practiced harder" and kind of take the brunt of the blame yourself. Composers are never like that. It's more along the lines of "Orchestra X didn't program my piece because they like that Euro crap/that post-minimalist crap/That New Complexity/That New Sincerity" etc. etc.—they think there must be some terrible extenuating circumstance or conspiracy turning things against them.
   
   My strategy is to remind myself that "a rising tide lifts all boats". If your friend gets commissioned by the LA Phil, how is that anything other than fantastic? It means the LA Phil is paying attention to your immediate sphere, your field, and bringing that music to new and bigger audiences. And you never know, your friend might drop your name at Deborah Borda or John Adams and they'll end up commissioning you next time.



5. What music made you want to be a composer?
   

   
   At first it was just pure harmony what did it for me. When I learned how to play major chords I thought they were the most beautiful sound imaginable. Somewhat later it was Beethoven, Brahms, and Ravel. Now hundreds of different things make me want to compose.



6. What’s your second favorite opera after Berg’s Lulu?
   

   
   Need you ask? Nixon in China.



7. When should I clap?
   

   
   Whenever the hell you want? As long as it's not during a super beautiful quiet part?

8. You’re equally well known as a performer in your own right, especially of contemporary music. In what way does your work as a performer of other people’s music influence your work as a composer?
   

   
   The two are linked quite inextricably. I perform my own stuff a great deal, of course, but it will never challenge me as a pianist in quite the way a score from someone else does. Ted Hearne's Parlor Diplomacy totally schooled me on how to play trills, I learned how to hocket and groove from playing Reich and Adams and Brad Mehldau, and Rzewski taught me about playing ridiculous counterpoint with one's forearms. And whatever I'm currently practicing finds its way into what I write, sooner or later—it's just unavoidable. It works the other way, too; I think I get a "leg up" on deducing a composer's intentions by being one myself.
   
   Playing the piano is also my primary means of discovering new music—I don't listen to contemporary music regularly (though I'm trying to find more time for that) so I'll often find out about a great composer by performing one of his or her works.



9. You’ve been associated with at least two different larger groups of composers: the six person collective Sleeping Giant and more broadly, a generation of young composers currently living and working in Brooklyn. How important is it for you to be surrounded by a community of other composers in making the music you do?
   

   
   The proximity to fellow composers is a nice thing, and the Sleeping Giants are close friends and we love getting drunk together, so that's great. But technically we could collaborate from anywhere in the world—one doesn't need to occupy the same space in order to share work, create work together, critique said work, talk trash, and get silly.
   
   The Brooklyn/Greater NY area really comes in handy for performing. I love playing with groups like Metropolis Ensemble or ACME, chamber ensembles, bands, bandsembles (that's French), just any random and interesting gig that comes my way. Since college, my M.O. has been to stay as busy as possible at all times, and living in the midst of such an active community has allowed me to support myself doing just that. I'm grateful for it literally every day.



10. What’s the next big thing we should be looking for from Timothy Andres?
    

    
    Some things I'm particularly excited about this Spring: playing a solo "opener" for the Brad Mehldau trio in Denver, then giving a full recital at Le Poisson Rouge here in New York, leading into my London début at Wigmore Hall in June.
    
    Also some new pieces in the works for next season that I'm thrilled about: a solo piece for the amazing young pianist Kirill Gerstein, a quintet for Jonathan Biss and the Elias Quartet, my first choral piece (!) for Present Music in Milwaukee, scoring a documentary, perhaps a song cycle, and some big new collaborative works with the Sleeping Giants.
    
    And a bit down the road, my next album—a collaboration with the wonderful young orchestra Metropolis Ensemble.

Labels: 10 Questions, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, wildup

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra celebrated the influence artists have on one another in their performances this weekend. Appropriately enough, the shows coincided with one of their own collaborations, the 20th anniversary of Kent Twitchell’s giant Harbor Freeway Overture mural that motorists heading north out of downtown on the 110 freeway have grown accustomed to. The eight-story tall painting commemorates LACO and its members including three players still in the orchestra to this day - Julie Gigante, Allan Vogel and Roland Kato. Like the mural itself, LACO has become an integral part of living in Los Angeles with great performances like the one which I saw Sunday at the groups’ Westside home, UCLA's Royce Hall.

Music Director Jeffrey Kahane led the orchestra through works inspired by the French Baroque and in particular the music of François Couperin. The evening started with Ravel’s impressionistic recollection of Couperin’s music with Le tombeau de Couperin. The players produced the kind of lush romantic sound that is usually associated with a much larger ensemble. The other composer on the bill most directly inspired by Couperin was Thomas Adès whose Three Studies from Couperin took a slightly different approach. Adès starts with Couperin’s music itself and uses several of his themes originally written for Harpsichord as starting points for his own contemporary music. Whereas Ravel uses Couperin more as an idea, Adès takes a re-constructivist approach with a music that is surprisingly modern and clean in its overall tone despite the clearly Baroque patterns that travel right along with it demanding to be attended to. It's just a snippet of what makes Adès such an urgent composer and it was the highlight of the night.

The evening also took up Respighi’s Gil uccelli, a piece with several brief movements, each related to a specific French Baroque (or earlier) composer and a bird. Again Kahane managed a light, fleet sound from the orchestra. If there was a weak point to the evening, it was Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, a single movement piece for orchestra and solo cello. The underdeveloped, almost concerto didn’t quite fit the program’s overall theme. It also didn’t seem to win over too many in the audience. Ralph Kirshbaum was the soloist and he seemed to struggle on Sunday with stretches of wrong notes and a sometimes abrasive tone. He played an encore from the Bach Cello Suites that was far more assured and typical for a performer with his reputation. His appearance served a s a prelude for one of the more exciting events of the Spring here in L.A., the inaugural Piatigorsky International Cello Festival that Kirshbaum will head up in March with appearances from many of the world's greatest cellists for a series of concerts, master classes and other events or 9 days that will involve collaboration from LACO, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Colburn School and the USC Thornton School of Music. Check out the full schedule.

Labels: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra

I’m not in Los Angeles this weekend. However, if I were, I’d certainly be at the opening performance of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s 2011/2012 season. Music Director Jeffrey Kahane will be leading works by Golijov, Beethoven, and LACO’s composer-in-residence Derek Bermel who will be presenting the West Coast premiere of his concerto for electric guitar Ritomello. It’s a program that sets the tone for a banner season featuring new and recent music from a number of artists including Bermel, Thomas Adès, Gabriel Kahane, and Timothy Andres. Gabriel Kahane will present a new work in April 2012 which will be his second big commission for a local orchestra in Southern California in as many years. His Orinoco Sketches for the Los Angeles Philharmonic earlier this year was one of the highlights of last season. In the meantime, he’s been breaking down musical genre barriers elsewhere with the recent release of his new album of contemporary pop songs, Where Are the Arms which has too many should-be hits to go on about them all here.

Meanwhile, the recipient of LACO’s “Sound Investment” commission this year is the young Brooklyn-based composer, and friend of Kahane’s, Timothy Andres. “Sound Investment” which is now in its 11th year, is a commissioning program run by LACO where donors can make contributions to the ensemble specifically for the purpose of supporting new musical works for the orchestra. Andres should be no stranger to local classical music audiences having made a significant appearance on the L.A. Philharmonic “Green Umbrella” new music series at the invitation of John Adams in 2009. Last week he was back in L.A. to offer LACO staff and supporters a preview of his music and what he’s working on for the scheduled premiere in April. Andres is a tall, thin young man who is much more personable than his bookish appearance might suggest. He’s smart and engaging without being overly demonstrative or effusive. Only in his mid-twenties, he’s had some major successes including the previous L.A. Philharmonic gig. He released his first recording last year, Shy and Mighty, a one-hour song cycle for two pianos on the Nonesuch label. He garnered strong reviews for the recording and on Wednesday at the Colburn School in downtown Los Angeles he gave a small solo performance of “How Can I Live in Your World of Ideas?” a piece from the recording that was also included in his 2009 L.A. Phil performance.

His new piece for LACO is only just now taking shape, but it is a piano concerto that he will perform as the soloist. Andres’ work as a pianist has been highly influential on his compositions to date, and the spring LACO program will feature one of his other more notorious projects, a completion of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 26. Mozart famously left much of the music for the left hand in the piece blank with the intention of improvising it later along with the cadenzas in the performance. Andres took up the challenge to complete the piece by rewriting all of the left-landed component of the score not with a mind to mimicking or complementing Mozart, but providing his own retrospective historical commentary on it. You can listen to his performance of the piece on his excellent website already, which I would recommend you do. But until April, there are plenty of other great shows LACO has planned. And you don’t have to wait until April to hear them play. In fact, I wouldn’t wait at all given that Sunday’s show at Royce Hall already has a lot going for it.

Labels: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra

Jeffrey Kahane conducting the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Photo: Ken Hively

Jeffrey Kahane and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra returned to their westside home, UCLA’s Royce Hall, this weekend in their penultimate performance of the season. The show featured works from Dvorák and Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto. But for all the familiar favorites, the evening was also a reminder that LACO has and continues to have a significant hand in the new music arena even in a town with a number of significant venues for new(er) music. (The season's concluding performance will feature a new piece from Derek Bermel, Mar de Setembro, on May 14 and 15.) Kahane commented from the stage that he had long wanted to pair the Beethoven piano concerto with the first work on the program, Gli accordi più usate (“The Most Often Used Chords”), by John Harbison. The short four-movement piece was a commission from LACO for Harbison in 1993, and Kahane stated that he felt it was important to bring it back again given its beauty and the difficulty some new works have in seeing the light of day after their original performances. I for one was very glad he did, hearing this time around. Harbison based Gli accordi after a chart in an Italian music notebook identifying the most commonly used chords in musical composition. This guideline provided unintended inspiration for Harbison, who took it, and other charts in the notebook, as a kind of challenge to use familiar chords that rarely appeared in his own work at that time in new ways that fit into his musical world view. Kahane is right in that it is a lovely and very seductive piece. The third Ciaccona movement in particular suggests much deeper currents than its Baroque inspired name implies.

Jon Kimura Parker Photo: Tara McMullen

Harbison's piece was followed by Dvorák's Serenade in E major for Strings which is filled with more catchy turns of musical phrase than you can shake a stick at. Kahane led a well coordinated performance that made the most of the dance rhythms that permeate the piece. It wasn't the most Czech of all imaginable sounds, but the performance made up for any lack with its energy. After the break came the big piano concerto with Canadian pianist Jon Kimura Parker as soloist. As Kahane noted, this work starts from a similar place musically to Harbison's, relying on inventive uses of the most familiar of chords, scales and arpeggios arranged in a way for maximum effect. The LACO players sounded on top of things and provided a robust counterpoint to Parker's bright and athletic approach to the score. And yet it wasn't rushed in any way, though at some points I wished for a bit more reflection, particularly in the Adagio. On balance, the show played to LACO's strengths, pleasant, enthusiastic playing with a spirit of adventure and plenty of excitement. And revisiting the group's history of their own home grown commissions in the context of works they make a specialty in playing is always a good idea.

Labels: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra

Jeremy Denk and members of LACO
Photo: mine 2010

It was a week for classicism on L.A. concert stages. Almost eerily so, as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra appeared at Royce Hall on Sunday (which I attended at their invitation) in a program that paralleled in many ways last Wednesday’s appearance by the Saint Louis Symphony at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Both programs featured works of Stravinsky and Mozart, pairing a concerto and orchestral piece from Stravinsky’s neo-classical period with a concerto and symphony from Mozart. Both ensembles were led by affable American music directors, in this case Jeffrey Kahane, and were joined by affable American soloists. On Wednesday LACO employed the services of pianist Jeremy Denk for Mozart’s Concerto Rondo in D major for Piano and Orchestra and Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments. Both shows ended with a later Mozart symphony as well, with LACO taking the ever present 41st over SLSO’s choice of the 36th.

But with so many similarities, the two shows couldn’t have been further apart in outcome. As if in a mirror image response, LACO delivered impressive turns in Mozart which felt limp in the SLSO’s hands under David Robertson. Meanwhile, LACO's Stravinsky was somewhat manhandled. Which may speak to the different strengths and repertoire the groups are accustomed to. At the WDCH, the SLSO was a larger orchestral outfit parading as a chamber ensemble last week. And certainly while the orchestra is no stranger to Mozart, their docket is filled with lots of other larger, romantic fare. By contrast, LACO's size prevents as many performances of great big 18th and 19th century fare much more common with a larger ensemble. LACO, however, has spent more than a little time with the works of Mozart and other classical composers used to much smaller ensembles. Kahane and his players gave the Mozart a scrappy feel that fills Mozart's music with a real life flavor I for one love.

Of course, this was a big visit from Denk as well, who played the uncommon Stravinsky Concerto that eschewed strings in the Post-WWI milieu of its composition. And, although Denk's playing could get lost in the Royce Hall acoustics, it was an enjoyable dark and detailed performance. LACO's season continues with a chamber performance hosted by stage director Peter Sellars on April 29 at The Broad Stage and their next full concert the weekend of May 15.

Labels: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra