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FEATURE: LETTER FROM LOS ANGELES
October 18, 2005
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By Alan Rich
Just that teasing first chirp from the Los Angeles Philharmonic's superb
woodwind contingent was news good enough to start off the
Philharmonic's 87th season, its third in Disney Concert Hall, the
first of its "Beethoven Unbound" series. That sound — the tricky
woodwind seventh chord that starts Beethoven's First Symphony,
delightfully, in the "wrong" harmony — hung suspended in Disney's
welcoming air, a magical presence. Do people bother to notice the
elegance in Beethoven's scoring for winds? That, to these ears, has
been the special pleasure so far in the orchestra's Beethoven
project that has now reached its midpoint and will resume some time
next spring. The premise — the lordly Nine Symphonies set against
music of more recent vintage — is sound enough if you don't ponder
it too hard. Fortunately, management has stopped short of trying to
find truly compatible companion works to "unbind" the masterworks of
yore; if anything, of the three new works so far only one struck me
as truly worthy of sharing a program with even the most rudimentary
of Beethoven's symphonic ventures.
Nobody will yet claim Esa-Pekka Salonen as the eloquent friend to
Beethoven's music he may someday ripen into. His performances to
date, these past few weeks and in previous seasons, have been
clear-headed, conscientious and, let's say, noncommittal. He makes
all the right moves. He seats the orchestra in the "classical"
formation, with the second violins to his right, which nicely
underlines the marvelous interplay among the strings. His orchestral
balances favor the winds, and in these weeks there have been two
splendid young tryout oboists who have turned Beethoven's frequent
oboe solos into pure stardust. Salonen's attitude toward the
composer's stipulated repeats is, however, somewhat capricious; he
honored the first-movement repeats in the First, Second and Fourth
Symponies, not in the "Eroica" and "Pastoral"; in the Fourth he
omitted the repeat in the final movement, turning that wondrous
whirlwind into a brusque breeze. It may take a few years' mellowing
before Salonen allows the brook in the "Pastoral" to flow unimpeded
in its natural streambed; this past weekend's stream was the triumph
of artificial plumbing. On the positive side, I could not ask for a
more seductive ten minutes in all of the Viennese repertory than the
time spent with Salonen and his glorious woodwinds in the slow
movement of No. 4.
Oliver Knussen's Violin Concerto, interspersed between the
"Pastoral" and No. 4 this past weekend and delivered with infectious
delirium by Leila Josefowicz, is, like its composer, a likable work;
in that respect, at least, it formed a fit companion for those
particular Beethoven symphonies. Now and then it reaches into its
British ancestry, with an occasional "hey-nonny-nonny" as if to
flash its passport; most endearing, however, is a kind of
all-over-the-place athleticism. Of the previous "unbinding" works —
Henri Dutilleux' Shadows of Time and Magnus Lindberg's Sculpture — my memories are so negative that fairness demands further hearings
before I can honestly write.
Apropos honest writing, however . . . the pre-concert talks for the Beethoven series have been delivered — nay, hurled — by UCLA's Robert Winter, who in his day held audiences spellbound with his three-dimensional musicological discourse but seems of late to have fallen into a fantasy land of his own fashioning. At the session on the "Eroica" I wandered in as Dr. Winter was leading a group sing-along in The Star-Spangled Banner to demonstrate three-quarter time. A few minutes later he produced, or so he claimed, a recording of the "Eroica" by "my friend Artur Nikisch" who a) died in 1922 and b) never recorded the "Eroica." MEANWHILE.... The new season has burst upon us. Six other events held my attention in the past few weeks; let's see if I can squeeze them in. L.A. Chamber Orchestra at Royce Hall (9/23): An opening blast from Mozart's Titus Overture confirms the sheer vitality of Jeffrey Kahane's marvelous small orchestra. Cellist Alisa Weilerstein's performance of Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations is as good as the music needs, but boy! do that tired piece and I need a vacation from one another (after three hearings this summer). EAR Unit at REDCAT (9/28): Our great innovative ensemble begins business as usual at its new venue after being dropped at LACMA. In the usual gathering of self-indulgences and small-scale delights, Jacob Gotlib's taut, nicely shaped contrapuntal exercise Filaments cast a particular glow in the latter category. Terry Riley 70th Birthday Concert at Royce (10/1): I don't often walk out of concerts early, but the lurid travesty perpetrated upon Terry's In C by Japan's Acid Mothers Temple (with, I'm told, Terry's acquiescence) started a considerable exodus in which I was not the first. Terry's participation in his A Rainbow in Curved Air was the redeeming feature in an otherwise painful evening. L.A. Master Chorale at Disney Hall (10/2): Francis Poulenc composed his Figure Humaine in France in 1943; the poetry, by the resistance poet Paul Eluard, had been secretly circulated in occupied France during the war. The last of these choral settings is a passionate outcry: "On my notebook, on my desk, on each gust . . . I write your name! " In a fearsome crescendo, the rhythms and tempo continually interlocking and building over 21 stanzas the poet struggles to write the name: LIBERTY!! And whatever you may think — whatever I have thought — about the frivolous beauty of Poulenc's music, this final music on Grant Gershon's program with his Master Chorale grabbed a capacity audience by the scruffs of our collective necks and held us spellbound. Cecilia Bartoli at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (10/10): Extraordinary, that with all the easy roads open to her to score in the standard operatic fare, even crossover, Bartoli has applied her awesome talent — a voice of melting, vibrant beauty, technique of pinpoint accuracy — to exploring unfamiliar, bygone Italian repertory of historical interest that nobody else seems to want to touch. Some of this material is, let's face it, not all that great on its own. When Bartoli sang it in town the other night, with a splendid backup orchestra of early-music specialists, nobody seemed to notice. The Juilliard Quartet at Disney Hall (10/11): The personnel has changed over the years, but the gold standard remains unalloyed; this is the quartet that knows how to prove that the late string quartets of Beethoven and the works of Elliott Carter are part of the same language. If anything, Carter Five in the Juilliard's hands seemed to speak in gentler tones than Beethoven 131, but that was just part of the evening's magic. Some grossly misinformed stringer on the Times has it that the Juilliard was once "brash." That's how critics become endangered species.
(Alan Rich is the music critic of LA Weekly and the former chief music critic of Newsweek, the New York Herald Tribune and Los Angeles Herald Examiner. His recent books include the four volumes of Play-by-Play (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, including CDs of complete works) and American Pioneers in Phaidon's 20th Century Composers series.)
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