|
EDITORIAL
Disney Hall, a Resounding Success
October 28, 2003
|
By Robert P. Commanday
 Photo by David C. Miller Music director Esa-Pekka Salonen's planning for the second of the opening programs was most fitting in theme — "Living L.A." (i.e., contemporary music), and for the range of sonorities and textures of his musical selections. Salonen's own LA Variations (1996) to start and Silvestre Revueltas' Sensemayá (1938), a kind of Mexican Sacre de printemps, to close were "full disclosure." The more dramatic demonstration was with Witold Lutoslawski's Cello Concerto (1970). Its opening solo cello strokes, whispered at a level that perhaps only Yo-Yo Ma could dare, were audible up high in the orchestra side terrace, far to the rear of the soloist, his instrument facing in the other direction of course. Ma was a tiger in the Lutoslawski, producing the vigorous intensity with which the cello stands against the confrontational orchestral part, rhythmically and texturally complex, deliberately chaotic because of the "chance" or improvisational procedures used. In the more lyric portion, Ma played passionately, his whole performance commanding. The work is like a metaphor of the individual surviving in the turbulence of society and life. Salonen's LA Variations (on two hexachords) has a richness of sound stemming from his use of groupings of all 12 tones as the basic idea and from the fullness of the orchestration. The work is signally contrasting in textures and color, and with a vital rhythmic push, the 15 variations and coda evolve as a tightly integrated and continuous whole, an impressive, engrossing composition. Nothing like that could be said of John Adams' puzzling, empty The Dharma at Big Sur, co-commissioned by the L.A. and Orange County Philharmonic associations. The work rides on the featured soloist, Tracy Silverman, playing the electric six-string violin of his own invention. Although sounding improvised, Silverman's wide-ranging performance, with considerable sliding between notes, was fully composed by Adams after string playing styles from India, Iran and Afghanistan. Fairly far into the piece, the supporting orchestral writing and harmonic action remained minimal, the static harmony articulated by string pizzicato and horns in a slow-trudging Andante. Adams cited Jack Kerouac, Terry Riley and Lou Harrison as inspiration. Harrison influenced his use of "just intonation" but the effect of that was nominal. Rhythm was as monotonous as the harmony and the characteristic bright orchestrating and shifting accents of Adams' style were no part of this. When finally, far into the work, the tempo began to accelerate and the players on two electronic keyboard instruments began hammering away repeatedly on the same chord, it was like a homage (or reversion) to Philip Glass. The acceleration and crescendo to a big finish woke up the audience and stirred it to a response unmerited by this boring piece. Revueltas' Sensemayá, with its colorful orchestration, driven dance-impulse (in seven-eight time) and thrusting sonorities was an effective, big closer. Salonen was inside all of these works, his rhythmically incisive conducting drawing excellent performances from his Los Angeles Philharmonic. Above and beyond that, the orchestra carried itself with exemplary poise and dignity proper for artists, seating itself quietly and with a minimum of tuning and none of the gratuitous and noisy practising onstage habitual in San Francisco. The orchestra is seated on four tiers which can be lowered to produce a flat stage. Bench seating for chorus can be provided across the rear of the platform. A considerable portion of the audience surrounds the orchestral platform, seated at different levels in blocks and terraces, a plan following the example of the Berlin Philharmonie. Partly because of this so-called "vineyard" design, that part of the audience is much less a part of the picture, less visibly evident than those in the Davies Symphony Hall terrace seating. At the rear of the stage, an organ of 6,125 pipes (not yet operational) occupies the central position between the blocks of seating. In a unique and striking design, its visible and largest pipes are square, wood clad (in fir, matching the ceiling), and they curve upwards and outwards unsymmetrically, in a cluster like a section of a stylized forest. The principal seating (in front of the orchestra platform) is also divided into sections, mostly without central aisles. The seats are upholstered in a Gehry-designed green, purple and orange floral pattern, the design randomly assigned the seats by computer in order to produce a garden-like effect. A unique feature is the provision for natural daylight to enter the hall, by way of eight skylights, 30 feet square (veiled for this program), and a very large window at the top rear, called by Gehry the "Kimono window" because of its shape. The interior spaces outside the auditorium proper are splendid, with fir-clad walls and great square tree-like columns (picking up on the organ pipe design), soaring girders and glass panels bringing in natural light, carpeting in the same green, purple and orange floral pattern of the seat fabric (named after the initiating and principal donor, Lillian Disney). There are five layers of lobby space, which overlook the main area, and there is a large area, the "BP Hall" called a pre-concert foyer, that can acommodate up to 600 for pre-concert and other lectures, banquets, education activities, even chamber music. The normal ancillary features include the Green Room, the Founders' Room (which looks onto its own private garden), a full-service restaurant, a café, store/gift shop, an adjacent seven-level garage for 2,191 cars, and a full range of backstage facilities (orchestra library, choral hall, rehearsal studios, dressing rooms, orchestra lounge and locker room, suites for the music director and guest artists). To house the L.A. Philharmonic Association, its offices and facilties, there is a 17,000 square foot building, the Alfred E. Mann Center, attached to the south end of the Disney Concert Hall Complex, the whole located on the 3.6 acre Los Angeles County land. All this took 16 years of planning, and fund-raising, a long and lively history that began with Lillian Disney's initial gift of $50 million (a figure doubled by the family's subsequent gifts). The final cost was $274 million, coming mostly from private individuals and families, foundations and corporations. $274 million for all this, just about the price of a medium-size war plane. (Robert P. Commanday, the senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.) ©2003 Robert P. Commanday, all rights reserved |