Sequenza21

Sunday afternoon was the final concert provided by Esa-Pekka Salonen as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has consistently said that he’ll be back with us on a regular basis, but before the start of the concert, the administrative management and the Board came on stage to announce to us the Salonen now has the title of Conductor Laureate and will return on a regular and “significant” basis in the future. The nature of the continuing role was not announced, but it is consistent with how well the Phil (and Salonen) have handled this transition that the details on the role of the future would wait to be announced until after Dudamel is on board and present.

One of the most significant composers to Salonen as conductor, as composer, and as musician has been Igor Stravinsky. The times he has given us as music director of the Phil are studded with some memorable performances of Stravinsky works. The Rite of Spring has become a signature piece of the orchestra under Salonen. If my memory is correct, the first association of the Phil, Salonen, and Peter Sellars was a production of l’Histoire du Soldat given in the Dorothy Chandler, which had the somewhat-embarrassed Salonen in cowboy boots, still awkward at having a stage role. For his final series of concerts as music director, Salonen chose Stravinsky; Salonen chose a double bill of Oedipus Rex and Symphony of Psalms. I think it was typical of his personality that he chose works that required group forces, soloists and chorus, making it easier for Salonen the person to diffuse the focus on Salonen as the exiting music director. He also had thoughts about these works, interpretations he wanted to provide us.

Salonen gave us a powerful, emotional performance of Oedipus. From the starting anguish of the mens chorus, the citizens of Thebes suffering under the plague, to the powerful conclusion as the fates had acted this was a gripping performance. The orchestra and the members of the master chorale gave us the music with power and with emotion. At times on Sunday, however, the power seemed to drown out the voices of two of the lead singers. Following the terrible events of the Oedipus, Salonen’s Symphony of Psalms was healing and consolation, a blessing at the end.

Peter Sellars’ concept was to link the two works, following the concept that Stravinsky was experiencing a development of his own religious beliefs during the period of composition. Sellars’ concept was to have the narrator of Oedipus become the daughter, Antigone, and the text of the narration was edited to fit this concept. The approach gave much more immediacy to the communication of the narrator. Then for Symphony of Psalms, Sellars imagined this as a musical equivalent of the concluding play in the Oedipus trilogy, the work to bring consolation and closure to the experience. He gave the narrator, Antigone, an introductory speech that may have been taken from “Oedipus at Colonus”, and he also brought Oedipus on stage for movements to image the closure of the trilogy. (Sellars had also introduced the second daughter, Ismene, a dancer in a non-speaking role, to aid the movements in both works, further promoting the concept.) Sellars used the flexibility of Frank Gehry’s design for the Disney Hall stage and auditorium. Oedipus was given three levels for its performance, a level for the orchestra, a level for the chorus, and a level for the characters. Further, the announcement of the death of Jocasta and the blinding of Oedipus could be made from the top left tier of the hall. For Symphony of Psalms, the chorus first lined the side aisles of the front and back of the auditorium, before crossing to the top of the three levels while Antigone, Ismene and the blinded Oedipus were given the middle level for their closing pantomime. I thought the whole concept worked brilliantly. Viola Davis was excellent as narrator/Antigone. Of the singers, Anne Sofie von Otter was particularly notable in the small, crucial role of Jocasta while Roderick Dixon was an affecting Oedipus.

Salonen had avoided much of the applause the audience wanted to give him at the start of the concert and the second half. But when he finally lowered his arms as silence emerged in the hall after the conclusion of Symphony of Psalms the torrent of applause began. We all rose to our feet, clapping. No one hurried out to beat the parking lot traffic. We applauded. Salonen came out for a bow. We kept applauding. The orchestra members were applauding. Quite a few of us were wiping our eyes. Then members of the orchestra who hadn’t been used in Symphony (violins, violas, a few others) came down from their seats in back, with the women carrying bouquets of flowers for Salonen; he had to accept those, one by one. Finally the members of the orchestra lined up to walk by and hug Salonen, as the applause continued. Then the end came. What a set of memories!

The Los Angeles Times has two nice galleries of photos of the performances on their web site, here and here.

The spring festivals are underway; here are three you should know about.

1)  In Boston, the new Beeline Festival (curated by Evan Ziporyn and Christine Southworth) continues tonight with performances by Ensemble Robot and The Loud Objects.  The final concert will be Sunday, with performances by Gamelan Galak Tika and Dewa Ketut Alit.  With Beeline it seems that Boston finally has a new music festival with more of a Downtown slant.

2)  Tonight in Brooklyn, the first annual New Music Bake Sale runs from 7PM to midnight, featuring music from So Percussion, Lisa Moore & Martin Bresnick, Lukas Ligeti, Newspeak, ACME, JACK Quartet, Dither, loadbang, and Ensemble de Sade.  Plus, the event really is a bake sale — the ensembles performing and more than a dozen other groups and organizations will be selling goodies from their bake sale tables to raise money for their future activities.

3)  Bang On A Can just announced this year’s Marathon for May 31st, which will once again be held at the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan and will kick off the River To River Festival.  Twelve hours of music, from noon to midnight.  I’ll just quote the press release: “Music by: Andy Akiho, Gavin Bryars, Jeppe Just Christensen, Eric km Clark, Joe Cutler, Moritz Eggert, Bill Frisell, Michael Gordon, Ted Hearne, Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, Phil Kline, David Lang, Steve Martland, Matthew McBane, Meredith Monk, Anders Nordentoft, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Howard Skempton, Kevin Volans, Julia Wolfe, Evan Ziporyn, AND MORE.  Performances by: Ars Nova Copenhagen, Athelas Sinfonietta, Bang on a Can All-Stars, DITHER, Ethel, Bill Frisell, Brooklyn Rider, Build, Shiau-uen Ding, Henry Grimes & Andrew Cyrille, Paul Hillier Lionheart, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ken Thomson’s 9-headed Saxophone Monster, Smith Quartet, Signal, Sandeep Das, Tortoise, Victoire, Wu Man, Your Bad Self, AND MORE.”

3a)  Also, it’s not a festival per se, but there’s a major performance of Terry Riley’s “In C” at Carnegie Hall on Friday, April 24th.  I’ll be covering it, so watch this space.

3b)  And speaking of Christine Southworth (co-curator of the Beeline Festival), almost a year ago she released a CD called “ZAP!” I specifically asked her to send me a copy so I could review it, and it’s really good, but I never actually wrote the review.  Check it out here.  There’s even a video of a live show which includes live performance on the Van de Graff Generator at the Boston Museum of Science.

From the Ojai Music Festival blog comes word of the latest twist on an old scam:

We can’t really believe that this is happening. Last week, someone started calling the offices claiming to be Steven Mackey – the great American composer, and featured performer on the 2009 OMF lineup. His story was pretty complicated, but the gist of it was this: poor fellow got stuck in Jamacia over spring break, and now needs our producer to wire him money to get home. Our producer works remotely for most of the year, so after speaking with “Steven,” we called her. She was occupied, so she asked us to call Steven ourselves, and we found him, sitting rather undramatically in the dentist’s office. Just yesterday, the scammer tried calling again. Turns out he couldn’t tell us anything about his world premiere composition that he’ll be performing here in June… 

Last night Salonen conducted the premiere of his new Violin Concerto, performed by Leila Josefowicz. You can be sure there’s a lot of advance buzz about a piece when the Wall Street Journal publishes an essay about the soloist of a piece of classical music; unfortunately, much of the WSJ is protected by a subscription-only wall, but here’s the link in case you are willing to try. The work was initially scheduled for premiere back in January when Salonen conducted the Chicago Symphony, but it wasn’t ready and he substituted performance of the new Los Angeles Symphony (No. 4) by Arvo Part. The new Part symphony is a major and important work, but I don’t think the Chicago audience got the better of the switch. This new Salonen piece is astounding, the work of a mature composer and a great virtuoso on the violin. Why wasn’t this being recorded? (The performance will be broadcast tomorrow night, Saturday the 11th, at 8:00 p.m. PDT on KUSC.)

First of all, the violin part sounds almost unplayable, as implied by the WSJ article. How did she hit so many notes without any sounding wrong? How did she have such drive and energy to come to the orchestra like a storm, lifting them up and moving them along and capturing their music in her environment? Second, the orchestral parts show Salonen as an assured master of melody and color; his understanding of the colors of Stravinsky and Ravel as a conductor come across as a composer. In his pre-concert talk with Steven Stucky, Salonen said that he composed thinking of the Philharmonic musicians who would be playing the parts; he knew how they would do, how they would sound. Third, and most important of all, Salonen as composer has something to say, not merely the techniques with which to say it.

The work is in four movements, lasting just over a half hour. But rather than reading my words, read Salonen’s comments on the work, here.

The work was surrounded by Ligeti’s “Clocks and Clouds” and the Beethoven Fifth. Salonen, composer-conductor, had something new to say about the Fifth, something he didn’t quite say in his Beethoven cycle three years ago. This was not a performance by Karajan or Bernstein, to name just two. It seemed as if Salonen was working to make us feel how new and how radical Beethoven’s work was. Parts seemed to race, parts seemed to contemplate; the whole was very persuasive.

A note for composers in Southern California

Two students at USC Thornton have formed a group named “What’s Next?”, and with the cooperation and assistance of advisors at USC/Thornton are scheduling a series of three concerts of new music this June (June 11, June 16, and June 19). They are soliciting composers across SoCal to submit “adventurous” new works, no longer than 20 minutes long, for soloist or chamber group. They already know they will be playing works by Don Crockett, Stephen Hartke, Erica Muhl, and Paul Chihara. If you go to their web site, here, you’ll find much more information, including information for composers and for musicians with abilities to participate in the performances. If, like me, you’re without either talent, you’ll also find the initial information about location and starting time of this interesting new start-up. Oh, yes, you’ll also find their names, but do check out What’s Next?

Photo credit:  J. Henry Fair

The days dwindle down. For April we had only three remaining programs conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and after last night only two programs remain. Last night’s Green Umbrella concert gave us a look forward, plus just a touch of reminiscence. There could well have been a concert of Salonen’s works, but a retrospective of the man as composer (and as engine for the Green Umbrella series) can wait for a future year and a future visit. Instead, the program was a beautifully selected set of four world premieres by composers new to almost every one in the Disney Hall audience. And for the selection, in addition to Salonen we have to honor the inputs of the Phil’s advisor for new music, Steven Stucky, who began his “brief” work with the orchestra over 20 years ago, when Andre Previn was music director. Stucky will be leaving his position with the Phil next season. He has been a pleasure.

The four composers whose works were premiered were born in four different countries: Mexico, Britain, the U.S., and China. All with at least one other country and language in their current lives. One man and three women. Born between 1974 and 1980. All composers whose names we should look for, whose music we should hear.

First up was Enrico Chapela, who gave an interview to Sequenza21 back in January, just before another of his works was performed at BAM. His work Li Po is a composition for 18 musicians (eight winds, eight strings, two percussion) for a prismatic combination of shifting sounds and colors. The work came with a lengthy text of the poem on which the work was apparently based, but Chapela had abstracted the words for the pitches and stress of the sounds, not for the meaning of individual vowels and consonants. The musical structure was complex, crying for a second hearing, but completely fascinating as it evolved. Listening to the work I was unaware of the passage of time. Really interesting.

Within Her Arms by Anna Clyne provided a fascinating change. It is a work for 15 strings, three each of violins I and II, violas, cellos and basses. What could be the melody of a lyrical folk song is taken up by the instruments, sometimes in sections, sometimes individually, repeated, reflected, recombined, and then a return to the original melody. Clyne achieved depth and complexity and interest from her skills with simplicity.

Mouthpiece XI was a showpiece for the composer, Erin Gee, as vocalist. The work is for singer with electronics; Gee ambidextrously switched between two microphones, one for pops and clicks, one for pitched sounds. Sixteen instrumentalists, including three percussionists, provide the instrumental sounds. Gee now lives and works in Austria. The work is from a series of Mouthpiece works that explore the instrumentality of a voice. Reviews linked on her web site indicate that she has used the two-microphone approach to vocal sound in at least one earlier work, Sleep.

After intemission, the Phil’s New Music Group performed Deluge by Fang Man. This work was for the largest ensemble (22) and seemed the most complex of the four new works. Her program notes describe the work as being inspired by a Kandinsky painting, and the center of Kandinsky’s work became, for her, the center of “Deluge” with water evoked by a major role for the harp. Again, complexity made it difficult to grasp her sense in just a single hearing by the composer.

As prelude to the concert, the Phil presented video images of Salonen as conductor of the Phil. When he walked on stage, the 1500 or so in the audience rose to their feet to honor the man. To close the concert, Salonen conducted singer and ensemble (of 5) in Floof, a Salonen work he first brought to the Green Umbrella series 18 years ago, the year before he became music director. Yes, this musical “jabberwocky” sounded like a work from twenty years ago. We know that Salonen as composer has moved into other approaches to music. But the bright, sparkling, sounds by coloratura supported by cello, contrabass clarinet, keyboards and percussion remained entertaining and sheer fun.

This work was first performed when the Green Umbrella series was performed at the Japan America Theatre downtown. Having 100 in the audience was a decent turn-out for some of those concerts. But thanks to Salonen, and Ernest Fleischman, and Lillian Disney and Frank Gehry, the program persisted, and grew.