Tuesday evening the Los Angeles Philharmonic opened its 103rd season on the Hollywood Bowl. It was an attractive night. Lustrous twilight. Shiny moon. Paradisal climate. Unusually mild site visitors. A program that includes Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev favorites. Cares may simply slip away as soon as strolling by way of welcoming and environment friendly safety.
Nonetheless, the true world is rarely far-off from the Bowl. One of many highlights of this season has fallen sufferer to a baffling Venezuela journey ban. Gustavo Dudamel can now not convey his Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra in August. That now signifies that Dudamel will spend solely a single week on the Bowl throughout his penultimate summer time as L.A. Phil music director.
A number of the Bowl’s amenities have been dolled up a bit, however the amphitheater feels fragile after the January wildfires. The navy on our streets has produced an L.A. edginess. Might which have contributed to the Bowl’s unusually low opening-night attendance? Ticket gross sales had been mentioned to have been sturdy, making the numerous empty seats worrisome no-shows.
What Tuesday evening did herald was an L.A. Phil summer time season with fewer splashy occasions than common (no opera, for one), a number of conductors making their Bowl debuts and a great deal of Russian music. It was, furthermore, a Tuesday that proved a comparatively somber event, which, regardless of the stunning environment, match the temper of the occasions.
Danish conductor and Minnesota Orchestra Music Director Thomas Sondergard made his L.A. Phil debut. There may be temptation to put each debut, together with each conductor invited again to the Bowl, as a possible candidate for the lengthy listing, brief listing or no matter listing to be the L.A. Phil’s subsequent music director after Dudamel departs for New York subsequent 12 months. However Bowl concert events are typically hit-and-run occasions.
Sondergard demonstrated a way of grandeur, generally shattering, different occasions starchy. However there have been all of the opening-night kinks to be labored out with audio, video, an orchestra simply getting back from trip and dealing with minimal rehearsal time.
None of this performed into Sondergard’s or the Bowl’s strengths as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade in A Minor opened this system. The tasteless Ballade is a lesser rating by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century British composer who deserves a revival for his extra substantial works.
Pianist Kirill Gerstein performs with the L.A Phil on opening evening Tuesday on the Hollywood Bowl.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Occasions)
For Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, the subdued blue shell lighting out of the blue turned a surprisingly vivid orange. Amplification met the obvious illumination with the night’s piano soloist, Kirill Gerstein, unnaturally dominating a sonically repressed orchestra. The video screens went their very own loopy manner, whether or not unmusically flipping from close-ups of fingers and lips or trying surreal cornball particular results.
It was all an excessive amount of (and within the orchestra’s case, too little), however Gerstein is a gripping pianist in any scenario. He has simply launched an iridescent recording of a bit written for him and vibraphonist Gary Burton by the late jazz nice Chick Corea. Thomas Adés wrote his heady Piano Concerto for him. Of all the nice recordings of Rachmaninoff’s over-recorded Second Piano Concerto, Gerstein’s current one with the Berlin Philharmonic would be the strongest.
Each word, essential or incidental, he hit within the Rhapsody had a purposeful depth. What you might hear of Sondergard’s contribution was a starkly efficient percussive response from the orchestra. It was, beneath any circumstances, a placing efficiency.
Video and audio settled down for Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, which was written in 1944, a decade after Rachmaninoff wrote his Rhapsody. The world had momentously modified in these 10 years.
Each composers fled Russia after the 1917 revolution, however their relationships with their fatherland was very totally different. Though Rachmaninoff by no means returned, he remained completely old-world Russian. He wrote his Rhapsody in idyllic Switzerland, earlier than immigrating to the U.S., the place he died in Beverly Hills in 1943.
Prokofiev spent years in Paris and within the U.S. as a modernist, however finally Mom Russia was too sturdy of a pull, and he returned regardless of the creative restrictions of Stalinist Russia. His Fifth is a conflict symphony, written at a time of nice nationalism, and it premiered in Moscow in January 1945 simply after Russia had routed the Nazi invaders.
Sondergard’s efficiency lacked the soul of, say, André Previn. (Previn carried out the Fifth at his first live performance as L.A. Phil music director in 1985). Right here, threatening thunder of the monumental first motion was adopted by threatening lightning within the sooner scherzo adopted by the threateningly darkish cloudy skies within the gradual motion adopted by the victorious bombing of the ultimate motion.
The overwhelming bigness of this efficiency occurred on the day that the U.S. reaffirmed its dedication to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Three years in the past, some questioned whether or not Russian music must be carried out in any respect. A number of different orchestras canceled performances of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” The Bowl’s annual “Tchaikovsky Spectacular” retained the Overture though this system started with the Ukrainian Nationwide Anthem.
This summer time Russian music abounds on the Bowl with the standard Tchaikovsky (which will probably be a part of the “Classical Pride” program Thursday), a full week of Rachmaninoff, together with extra Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky. It was with Tchaikovsky that Dudamel made his U.S. debut on the Bowl, the remaining being historical past.
Russian music has, in truth, been a mainstay of the Bowl for 103 years. Russian performers and composers helped to make L.A. what it’s artistically at the moment. And the way Russian composers, those that stayed and people who left, handled militarism, nationalism and the specter of repression has by no means felt extra related.
