Some much needed levity, of both high brow and low brow variety

October 29, 2012 Leave a comment

I was going to finish my review of this past Saturday’s Los Angeles Philharmonic Mahler 5 concert, or of András Schiff‘s sparkling take on Book 2 of The Well-Tempered Clavier before that, or the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s excellent organ concert before both of them.

Instead, I figured I’d post a couple of funny things to provide some mild comic relief to all of the weather woes being experienced by East Coast family and friends in the way of Stormageddon  2012 (BTW:  I haven’t heard it called that by anyone — did I really just make that up all by my lonesome??!!!).

I’ll get to those other reviews in the coming days.  In the meantime, I hope you get a chuckle from these two things, one very classical music oriented (care of the Pacific Symphony’s tumblr), and one very much NOT.

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Catching up with the LA Phil: one post, three concert reviews

October 28, 2012 Leave a comment

Claire Booth (as Max), Daníel Bjarnason, and Robin Ticciati

Continuing my efforts to clear my mental backlog of things I’ve wanted to write about during the past two weeks but couldn’t, below are my (slightly abridged) thoughts on three Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts from last week, specifically:

  • Gustavo Dudamel’s multimedia concert featuring Ravel and Knussen
  • The first Green Umbrella concert of the year, with John Adams conducting works by Daníel Bjarnason and Nico Muhly
  • Robin Ticciati conducting Liadov and Sibelius, plus Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto with Lars Vogt

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Catching up with the LA Phil: trying to fill empty chairs

October 27, 2012 1 Comment

It’s been an unexpectedly unruly past two weeks for yours truly.  I squeezed in a few concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall, but unfortunately didn’t have any capacity to do much of anything else, including write, until now.

Time for me to start catching up.  Before we get into my views of the performances, let’s warm up with the matter of the Los Angeles Philharmonic trying to fill some open positions.  The orchestra recently had two open auditions for titled woodwind chairs:

  • Associate Principal Clarinet:  this is essentially downgrading the Principal Clarinet chair previously held by the late Lorin Levee, continuing the orchestra’s move away from the two principal system in place between the 1960′s to the mid-1980′s
  • Principal Flute:  the latest attempt to bring stability back to a position which, after two decades of  having the same two people hold the position, has been in constant flux.  If you count former principals Janet Ferguson (who stepped down in 2006) and Anne Diener Zentner (who retired shortly thereafter), four people have held the title in the past six years — the other two being Mathieu Dufour and David Buck.

So what happened at those two auditions?

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CD review: LA Master Chorale’s new Górecki recording is stunning

October 16, 2012 Leave a comment

The Los Angeles Master Chorale and their Music Director, Grant Gershon, get ready to officially kick-off their 2012/2013 this coming Sunday. Among the music to be featured that night are works by Nico Muhly that they have previously recorded: Bright Mass with Canons and the West Coast premiere of A Good Understanding.

All that said, their season is already off to an auspicious start with the release on CD and MP3 download of their latest recording for Decca:  ”Górecki – Miserere,” featuring three works by Polish composer Henryk Górecki:  Lobgesong (“Hymn of Praise”), the title track, Miserere, and the major-label premiere of Pieśni Maryjne (“Marian Songs”).  Their live performance of these works at the end of last season was stunning, and this recording faithfully captures it.

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Last item

October 13, 2012 Leave a comment

Reblogged from Classical Life:

From today's Orange County Register online, and tomorrow's print version, Page 2:

Last item

It has been our pleasure to serve you as the ruthless people columnist these past two-plus years, but as a philosopher once said, “All bad things must come to an end.”

Today is our (as in Timothy Mangan’s) last celebrity column. We will be returning to our first love, reporting on and reviewing classical music, elsewhere in these pages.

Read more… 106 more words

Congrats to Mr. Mangan. It's about freakin' time.

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Angela Meade brings added punch to LA Opera’s cast of Don Giovanni for final two shows

October 12, 2012 Leave a comment

Los Angeles Opera made some cast changes for the last two performances of Don Giovanni, the most noteworthy being the addition of Angela Meade as Donna Anna (Julianna Di Giacomo played the role for the first five performances).  The winner of the 2011 Richard Tucker Award and the Met’s 2012 Beverly Sills Artist Award, Ms. Meade brought her talents fully to bear at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Wednesday night.

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A case of musical ADD: Andsnes and Dudamel headline latest LA Phil concert, but news of deMaine creates the biggest buzz

October 11, 2012 1 Comment

The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s second week of concerts in the 2012/2013 season was clearly meant to be a contrast from the first.  After having regaled us all with a sparkling world premiere of Symphony by Steven Stucky and a romp through the modernist machinations of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), Gustavo Dudamel decided to go old school with an all-Beethoven set of concerts:

  • Mr. Dudamel and orchestra would be taking their first shot together at the expansive Third Symphony (the “Eroica”).
  • For good measure, he and the orchestra invited the formidable Norwegian pianist, Leif Ove Andsnes, to join them in not just one, but two of Beethoven’s piano concertos:  the first and third.

That was certainly the draw going into the concerts, and the results thereof should have been the big story coming out of them.  This is not the way it turned out.

Don’t get me wrong:  the concert itself was a success, with Messers. Dudamel and Andsnes each bringing a different — but not incompatible — approach to Beethoven; however, when the weekend was done, all of the talk was about a less well-known (but ultimately just as important) musician that was also on stage at Walt Disney Concert Hall that weekend — Robert deMaine.

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LA Chamber Orchestra displays its range in outstanding season opening concert

October 9, 2012 Leave a comment

Andrew Norman, James Matheson, and Augustin Hadelich

Do you have one of those friends that are good at seemingly everything they do?  You might already know that they’re like that, but when you see them in action you always have to shake your head in surprise and admiration.

Jeffrey Kahane and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra are like that.

They kicked off their 2012/2013 season Saturday evening in Glendale with a generous program, featuring West Coast premieres of works by Andrew Norman and James Matheson sandwiched in between two very different concertos:  the Ravel Piano Concerto in D with Mr. Kahane conducting from the keyboard, and the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Augustin Hadelich in his LACO debut.

With its mix of different compositional styles and performance requirements, the concert gave Mr. Kahane and the orchestra a great opportunity to demonstrate the breadth of their musicality and talent.  If one had never been to a LACO concert before, I’d be hard pressed to think of a better way to become acquainted with the variety of things these musicians can do in an orchestral setting.  Taken in combination with their other series for smaller ensembles (most prominent among them are the “Baroque Conversations” downtown and innovative “Westside Connections” in Santa Monica), it was the kind of concert that shows how LACO continues to stretch the boundaries of what a traditional “chamber orchestra” can and should be.  Thank God for that.

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Make mine a double: season opener by Dudamel and the LA Phil was so awesome, I had to see and hear it twice

October 1, 2012 Leave a comment

Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic opened their 2012/2013 season with a contemplative work by Ravel, a world premiere by Steven Stucky, and Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring).

In other words, it was Retro Week at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

This is exactly the kind of program which the orchestra famously made common during Esa-Pekka Salonen’s tenure as Music Director.  Mr. Salonen had a habit of programming Stravinsky pieces seemingly more often than Beethoven’s, and Mr. Stucky was his in-house composer during his entire 17-year stay in Southern California.  In fact, the ties go back even further than that.  While Mr. Stucky has had many of his works receive their premieres care of Mr. Salonen and this orchestra, he was first named Composer-in-Residence by Mr. Salonen’s predecesor, André Previn.  The orchestra’s relationship with Stravinsky goes back further still, having played many times under the baton of the erstwhile Angeleno composer himself.

Of course, Mr. Stucky hasn’t had any official link to the orchestra since the end of Mr. Salonen’s Music Directorship, and with The Rite of Spring and the LA Phil having been indelibly linked to Mr. Salonen for some time now, it was rather wise for Mr. Dudamel to give this showpiece a break for the past three years.  Putting a program like this together to start his fourth season with the orchestra is no small gesture for Mr. Dudamel, and I made a point of seeing and hearing it twice:  Friday’s opening night performance, and the close-out on Sunday afternoon.

So how did this very Salonen-like program come across in Mr. Dudamel’s hands?  In a word:  magnificently.

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