Classical music concert thread

Talk about recent classical music concerts you've attended. To start it off, I just heard the LA Phil and Gustavo Dudamel conduct a program of Salonen's LA Variations, Lou Harrison's piano concerto with pianist Marino Formenti, and John Adams's City Noir at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Dudamel's interpretation of LA Variations is quite different than Salonen's: everything's more vivid --- the rhythms, textures, and melodies, but I don't think this is music for the ages. It's sounding a bit hackneyed on a second listen. The best and worst thing I can say about City Noir is that it mostly doesn't sound like Adams --- he's moving away from his Minimalist roots --- but it seemed like a discombobulated mess, which ironically may accurately reflect Los Angeles, which it's supposed to be about. Harrison's piano concerto was the revelation here: friendly, tuneful, and eclectic in its musical influences, it's basically a rejection of modernism in music to good effect. The Stampede 2nd movement was my favorite: a funky, exciting, rhythmic dialogue between the piano and the percussion section had the pianist alternate very quickly and fluidly between clusters and normal playing. He'd use his whole palm to play clusters of notes, and at times his entire forearm. The transition between clusters and individual notes was seamless and articulate. It always amazes me when I hear things like this how composers imagine things like this in their heads. Here's a picture of the elbow action from the LA Times review: If you know the 3rd movement of the Barber piano concerto, the Stampede movement was like a big expansion of the cluster playing in the Barber. Very cool to hear other influences like Brahms in the Harrison as well. This concert was part of their West Coast, Left Coast festival, and the orchestra eschewed their normal formal wear for the oh-so-hip open-neck black shirts, black jackets and slacks. And to catch up from the past couple of weeks: an amazing Verdi Requiem with extra-apocolyptic bass drums with the LA Phil/Dudamel, and the LA Master Chorale. This is basically a little opera disguised as a requiem --- that the ridiculously over-the-top Dies Irae is repeated 3 times kind of proves the point. An organ concert in WDCH with Jean Guillou playing several things, including his transcription of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, well-known to bass-loving audiophiles through Guillou's Dorian recording. Next week: John Adams conducts the LA Phil in various things, including his Dharma at Big Sur with Leila Josefowicz playing the 6-string electric violin in it. One of my recent favorite pieces, especially its rhapsodic 2nd movement. --Andre

It always amazes me how much sound she can get out of a piano. I do like her big playing style, though it may not be for all tastes.

--Andre

This weekend, I attended the LA Phil conducted by John Adams at Disney Hall. Pieces performed were again all-California: Paul Dresher's electronically assisted "Glimpse from Afar" (more below), William Kraft's Timpani Concerto, Leonard Rosenman's soundtrack to Rebel Without A Cause, and Adams's Dharma at Big Sur with Leila Josefowicz playing a 6-string electric violin (into a Boogie guitar amp). It was a fantastic concert with a really exciting atmosphere, and I would have gladly returned on Sunday if I hadn't scheduled something else already. Dresher's piece used a quadrachord ---- imagine the neck of a bass stretched to 160 inches with two electric bass pickups --- and a Marimba Lumina --- a multitouch-sensitive surface that you control with 4 marimba mallets. I believe both instruments were invented in Berkeley. He had computers on-stage that would record a sequence and then play it back while the two men did other things to the instruments. In this way, two guys could play really complex, highly layered music. The instruments would control other computers which would make various sounds. On the quadrachord, they could bow the strings, pluck them, strike them, put things under them (like cymbals) and hit them to make all sorts of interesting noises. The music surprisingly did not sound goofy, though I wouldn't want to hear it again. For me Dharma was the big hit of a really excellent concert, and Josefowicz really played the heck out of her instrument. The piece was made for Tracy Silverman, a jazz violinist, who has a softer, looser style. Josefowicz really brought classical virtuosity to the piece, playing things faster and with more articulation in that way that only the best classical players can. Both are valid approaches, and I look forward to this concert being released on iTunes. The Silverman recording has been out for a while, and has one my favorite clothing pictures ever on it. The other thing you can't readily appreciate on the recording is the subtlety of Adams's orchestration --- it is mightily complicated stuff that makes the otherworldly burbling in the background, like a Futurist's interpretation of the opening shimmer of the Mahler 1st. I dare say that this is Adams's finest piece. Tonight, I heard Yo-Yo Ma play the Bach cello suites nos. 2, 3, and 6 at the Granada Theater in Santa Barbara. It was a warm reading, though he had some technical issues: his cello kept slipping on the floor, and perhaps that threw him off because the intonation for the 2nd half with suite no. 6 was really inconsistent. He was gracious and seemed like a nice, normal guy. At the end he handed out the flowers that were presented to him, and tossed the bouquet into the audience. --Andre

I saw Lorin Maazel conduct the LA Phil in Bruckner 8th yesterday at Disney Hall. I don't understand Bruckner or the love of his music at all, but the audience went crazy at the end so the performance must have been all right.

--Andre