LAPhil / Gustavo Dudamel, Conductor: 27 Nov 2009, 8:00pm
WDCH:Ron Burkle / Ralph’s Food 4 Less Foundation Auditorium
The hall is 95% full. When I ordered my seat, this seat in the center balcony was my best choice for the price (I was not going to pay $198 ). The “Balcony” is the equivalent of the “Gallery” in Orchestra Hall – you see clearly and hear clearly – but the performers look a long way away. And for some reason, the orchestra never quite produces a balcony-shaking climax tonight —- location?, Dudamel? Scores?.
This was my first concert seeing The Dude conduct (I did see him play second violin last year at a LAPhil Chamber Music event). Tonight —- No hysteria. No flashbulbs. No screaming. Dudelmania fades.
A very interesting program:
1) Salonen (1958-): “LA Variations” ( 1996) for large orchestra (commissioned by LAPhil). Lots of episodes and colorful effects – to what end?
2) Harrison (1917-2003) “Piano Concerto” (1983- 1985) for solo grand piano, 2 solo harp, 1 solo percuss, 3 trmb, 3 percuss and small string orchestra. Marino Formenti is the guest pianist – he often performs here – audiences and critics and management love him.
A MAJOR discovery: lovely, delicate, exotic with a MAD second movement interlude (marked “Stampede”! — bushels of ‘wrong’ notes, some produced by his forearm ) ??Kirnberger2?? Somebody help me out
from the program notes:
After Ives, Henry Cowell & Harry Partch were in essential agreement — the overtone series is the rule, world music the font,” Harrison wrote in 1975. Harrison’s belief in the primacy of the overtone series led him to compose works in a variety of different tuning systems, among them the Piano Concerto that he began in New Zealand in 1983 and completed two years later at his home in Aptos, California.
Harrison “was the first major composer in the Western world to seriously incorporate alternate tuning systems into his music,” Adams wrote, “composing pieces in a variety of just-intonation systems and bringing back long-forgotten temperaments, as he did in his Piano Concerto (written for the jazz pianist Keith Jarrett), in which he calls for the solo piano to be tuned in an archaic mode called ‘Kirnberger 2’ that is subtly different from our garden-variety equal-tempered scale.”
The orchestra also participates in this tuning. Its unusual scoring calls for instruments, as Harrison wrote, “chosen basically for ability to play the intonation with some grace and because I like an integration of percussion with other facets of my music, and besides, who can resist writing for harps?” The results are a piquant sound, fresh but not jarringly “wrong.”
I could see them but I never heard the 2 harps. Tonight all three pieces required 2 harps. Since they rolled out 2 more for this piece and placed them in front of Dudamel (leaving the original 2 in place on the orchestra risers) , I assume they were specially tuned too. The collection of drums were also placed in front of Dudamel – special tuning?
3) Adams (1947-): “City Noir” (2009) for large orchestra. (LAPhil commission, for Dudamel’s first concert in WDCH as Music Director in October 2009)
I heard the live radio broadcast and saw the PBS re-run later in the month (with M Dufour getting a lot of air time). It is much more interesting live – you get to choose your own focus. Everyone enjoys it tonight . He described it as ‘ a score for an imaginary film’ — makes sense now.
Dudamel / LAPhil tours the US next Spring and will play this in Chicago. Will Mathieu Dufour be on the tour or in working in Chicago that week?
Teddy D. Boys
