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concert review: Los Angeles Philharmonic
Jan. 27th, 2009 07:22 amThis orchestra moved into its current digs five years ago, but this was my first chance to hear them there, which tells you how often its schedule and mine coincide. Frank Gehry's Disney Hall looks from outside like a train wreck that melted in the sun; the auditorium inside consists of interlocking shells and resembles a symmetrical glass candy dish - except that it's made of wood - with the performers down in the base where the candy crumbs go.
It's a small hall which I suppose explains the high ticket prices. I sat in the very highest and least-overpriced balcony. But it was worth it. Quite unlike the "phone it in from the next county" acoustics in the upper balcony of San Francisco's Davies, here details, or at least some of the details, of sound floated up from the stage quite adequately. If the volume was a little low up there, it must have been fairly punishing further down.
Seating room was fairly generous, which offered a decent minimum of space from my neighbor who squirmed, wriggled, and breathed loudly throughout the concert. Well, cheap seats.
Guest conductor Stéphane Denève believes in expressing his personality on the music largely in the form of abrupt and erratic tempo changes. Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances suffered manfully through this treatment. Denève's fright-wig hairstyle is a throwback to the days when classical was known as "longhair music".
Gil Shaham nonchalantly tickled his way through the Violin Concerto of Aram Khachaturian (or, as my editors insist on spelling it, Khatchaturian). Having the unusual property for a violin concerto of being actually fun to listen to, this work has been out of the repertoire for some years: so far out, in fact, that now it's coming back in. I approve, even if the reviewer for the LA Times doesn't.
Shaham looks a bit like Hugh Laurie and has the awkward gait of one of Laurie's more comic characters (which I distinguish from the awkward gait of Dr. House). Other concert violinists may bend and sway more than he, but few wander around the stage so much. At one point, Shaham turned his back on the bulk of the audience, crouched down, and addressed his playing to the feet of the principal cellist.
Also on the program, Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, named for the fancy house of the people who commissioned it. This is Stravinsky in crunchiest "neo-classical" (actually neo-Baroque) mood. Some claim that it resembles a Bach Brandenburg Concerto, though this requires a more generous definition of "resemble" than there is room for on one planet.
This was a matinee performance, and on the way in I saw a poster announcing an LA Master Chorale performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah for that very evening. The possibility of also attending that attracted me, but the quantity and variety of inconsistent and incorrect information I was given at the box office (which belongs to the Philharmonic; other groups are guests) concerning acquiring a ticket was truly astounding. The managers got a bit of an earful from me about that. When the Chorale's box officers appeared - an hour earlier and at a different place than I'd been told they would - the only seats still available proved to be in the terrace behind the chorus. This struck me as too weird a spot to listen to an oratorio from. The agent might have tried to persuade me that Disney Hall's acoustics are so wonderful that it would sound fine, but he didn't, so I declined.
Had dinner at what a tour book had claimed was the best restaurant on Olvera Street, which proved to be the worst restaurant on Olvera Street (I think I've now tried them all once or another), and returned to my guest room where I fell asleep before Elijah (it's a very long work) would have been over.
It's a small hall which I suppose explains the high ticket prices. I sat in the very highest and least-overpriced balcony. But it was worth it. Quite unlike the "phone it in from the next county" acoustics in the upper balcony of San Francisco's Davies, here details, or at least some of the details, of sound floated up from the stage quite adequately. If the volume was a little low up there, it must have been fairly punishing further down.
Seating room was fairly generous, which offered a decent minimum of space from my neighbor who squirmed, wriggled, and breathed loudly throughout the concert. Well, cheap seats.
Guest conductor Stéphane Denève believes in expressing his personality on the music largely in the form of abrupt and erratic tempo changes. Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances suffered manfully through this treatment. Denève's fright-wig hairstyle is a throwback to the days when classical was known as "longhair music".
Gil Shaham nonchalantly tickled his way through the Violin Concerto of Aram Khachaturian (or, as my editors insist on spelling it, Khatchaturian). Having the unusual property for a violin concerto of being actually fun to listen to, this work has been out of the repertoire for some years: so far out, in fact, that now it's coming back in. I approve, even if the reviewer for the LA Times doesn't.
Shaham looks a bit like Hugh Laurie and has the awkward gait of one of Laurie's more comic characters (which I distinguish from the awkward gait of Dr. House). Other concert violinists may bend and sway more than he, but few wander around the stage so much. At one point, Shaham turned his back on the bulk of the audience, crouched down, and addressed his playing to the feet of the principal cellist.
Also on the program, Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, named for the fancy house of the people who commissioned it. This is Stravinsky in crunchiest "neo-classical" (actually neo-Baroque) mood. Some claim that it resembles a Bach Brandenburg Concerto, though this requires a more generous definition of "resemble" than there is room for on one planet.
This was a matinee performance, and on the way in I saw a poster announcing an LA Master Chorale performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah for that very evening. The possibility of also attending that attracted me, but the quantity and variety of inconsistent and incorrect information I was given at the box office (which belongs to the Philharmonic; other groups are guests) concerning acquiring a ticket was truly astounding. The managers got a bit of an earful from me about that. When the Chorale's box officers appeared - an hour earlier and at a different place than I'd been told they would - the only seats still available proved to be in the terrace behind the chorus. This struck me as too weird a spot to listen to an oratorio from. The agent might have tried to persuade me that Disney Hall's acoustics are so wonderful that it would sound fine, but he didn't, so I declined.
Had dinner at what a tour book had claimed was the best restaurant on Olvera Street, which proved to be the worst restaurant on Olvera Street (I think I've now tried them all once or another), and returned to my guest room where I fell asleep before Elijah (it's a very long work) would have been over.
