Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone: “Casual Friday” with the LA Phil

November 20, 2012 2 Comments

On paper, Friday night’s Los Angeles Philharmonic concert seemed straightforward enough:  a program filled with loads of well-known hum-along tunes, a beloved old-school conductor (Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos) on the podium, and a popular soloist (Lynn Harrell) joining in on the fun.  In the concert hall, everything was generally as one would expect:  the music sounded beautiful and all the musicians involved could rightly take credit.  The audience gave a de rigueur standing ovation at the end and everyone, including me, walked away with a smile.

Pretty much writes itself, right?  Except that just below the surface was all the stuff really worth mentioning.  Nothing Earth-shattering, mind you.  Just a moment here, an observational tidbit there, and a very telling post-concert comment from Mr. Harrell that helped make the concert more interesting to me than a just a collection of well-played chestnuts.

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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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Charles Dutoit leads a refreshing night with the LA Phil

February 27, 2012 Leave a comment

A  program of Stravinsky, Debussy, and Prokofiev may still be considered adventurous in some concert halls, but for many years, it was the norm at Walt Disney Concert Hall.  The 20th Century French and Russian composers seemed to turn up on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s programs as often (if not more so) than Mozart, Brahms, or Strauss.  Alas, the orchestra’s current music director, Gustavo Dudamel, has had a much stronger penchant for Austro-Germanic works during his tenure up to now, so this type of programming has been increasingly left to guest conductors.

After nearly two months of performing Mahler, it was time for the LA Phil to cleanse our collective orchestral palate with a very different kind of program.  On hand to do the purification was Charles Dutoit, one of the handful of eminence gris to whom the orchestra has been regularly turning over their podium over the past decade.  The Swiss conductor’s aristocratic demeanor and strong reputation in this repertoire made him an ideal fit to lead the orchestra in this change-of-pace program on their first weekend back from their Venezuelan excursion.  On Saturday night, he and the LA Phil did not disappoint.

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Filed under All Reviews, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Music (News & Reviews), Reviews 2011/2012 Tagged with , , , ,

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