Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Last Night in L.A. - A Recording Session

Yesterday�s Philharmonic concert was a recording session, the first in Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the first recording for the LA Phil in four years. The recordings began with the Thursday performance of the program; a fifth performance will occur today (without audience) to get any final sound bites for the eventual release by DG.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic once had to travel to get good acoustics for recordings, even if the travel was a short trip by freeway to the West Side to UCLA�s Royce Hall. It�s great to have the acoustics in the home auditorium; it�s a joy to have an auditorium able to handle the full range of dynamics, from ppp to fffff. So in 2007 watch for DG to issue a new Philharmonic/Salonen recording of The Rite of Spring, accompanied by Bartok�s Miraculous Mandarin Suite and the Moussorgsky orchestration of Night on Bald Mountain. I�m not sure that the world really needs one more recording of any of these warhorses, but it will be good in the future to have proof of the sheer electricity and power of Salonen�s conducting and the musicians� playing.

The concert itself wasn�t quite what the recording will be. Rather than Bald Mountain, we had a first half of Bartok: the Miraculous Mandarin Suite (1924) followed by the Second Piano Concerto (1931) played by Lang Lang. The pianist showed none of the mannerisms for which he has been so criticized; the only possible comparison with Liberace was the velvet suit, but Lang�s was in black, with not a single rhinestone. The preceding Tuesday night he was also a model of chamber music partnership when playing with members of the Phil in the Chamber series. You get the feeling that in addition to gaining a little more maturity (he�s still only 23) he read some of the negative reviews and decided that he didn�t want to be remembered that way. Lang has all of the technical skills to handle the Bartok, and it�s good to see and hear him expand his repertoire beyond the Romantics. The concerto�s second movement with its duet for piano and tympani was lovely. Considering all of the music surrounding it, not only in the first and third movements but in the first and third works on the program, that second movement was the only opportunity in the whole concert for an audience to just relax and take a deep breath.

And wasn�t it terrific to have the New York Times print such a good review of our little band and its conductor and the fact that our programming includes composers who are still alive and writing, even if their names aren�t "Carter." Actually, to be fair, the programming of the New York Philharmonic isn�t that bad--for 1925, Carter aside.

posted by Jerry Zinser 1/16/2006