Robert D. Thomas/Class Act

THE INBOX: Rachael Worby's new ensemble, etc.

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

• RACHAEL WORBY, former music director of the Pasadena Pops, is returning to the Pasadena area with a new program, “Muse/ique.” The opening concert will feature Worby leading an orchestra with soprano Jessye Norman on July 30 at 7:30 p.m. outdoors on Caltech’s Beckman Mall (the date is a weekend when neither the Pasadena Pops nor the California Philharmonic are performing).

The program, which the media release says will “mix high culture with casual whimsy,” will include music by Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington and George Gershwin. Subsequent events will begin in fall the fall and carry on into 2012. Tables for the July 30 concert on sale; single tickets will go on sale June 15. INFO: 818/732-1712.

Worby served for 11 seasons as Pasadena Pops music director before leaving last September. Marvin Hamlisch takes over as the Pops music director this summer with concerts on The Lawn Adjacent to the Rose Bowl. The Pops is negotiating to move to the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia beginning in 2012.

• THE PASADENA CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC has acquired property adjacent to its current location that will enable the school to expand. The new property (130 N. Hill St.) will also allow for the creation of new performing spaces. The school currently has 1,250 onsite students and reaches an additional 3,000 students through its outreach programs.

• LOS ANGELES OPERA will commemorate the life and legacy of composer Daniel Catán on May 23 at 6 p.m. in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The 62-year-old Catán, a South Pasadena resident, died unexpectedly on April 8. His final opera, Il Postino (The Postman) received its world premiere by LAO to great acclaim in Sept. 2010 (LINK). Another Catán opera, Florencia en el Amazonas, was presented by LAO in 1997. MORE

• Speaking of Il Postino, PBS has announced that the LAO production of Catán’s opera will be part of the PBS lineup in the fall. The exact dates will be announced later. The programs will air on PBS SoCal (the former KOCE in Orange County) and other PBS stations, which no longer include KCET. MORE

• ROBERTO CANI, a native of Milan, has been named the Stuart Canin Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra. Cani, who studied at the Milan Conservatory of Music, the Gnessin Institute of Music in Moscow, and the University of Southern California, won several competitions and has extensive solo and orchestra experience. Canin served as LAO concertmaster from 2001-2010. MORE

• Pasadena resident NAZELI ATAYAN ROHMAN-FLY will be one of 74 pianists will compete in The Van Cliburn Foundation's Sixth International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs May 23-29 in Ft. Worth, Tex. Rohman-Fly was born in Armenia, studied there and in Moscow, and has performed extensively in Europe and the U.S. The competitors, who range in age from 35-79, represent 18 nationalities from 11 countries. Among the jurors is Mark Swed, music critic of the Los Angeles Times. MORE
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

OVERNIGHT REVIEW: Organist Chelsea Chen at Pasadena Presbyterian Church

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
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Chelsea Chen, organist
Monday, May 9, 2011 • Pasadena Presbyterian Church
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This has been quite a 24-hour period for organ lovers and for young organists. Sunday night, 30-year-old Cameron Carpenter made his Walt Disney Concert Hall recital debut (LINK) Last night, 27-year-old San Diego native Chelsea Chen played an impressive recital at Pasadena Presbyterian Church sponsored by the Los Angeles and Orange County chapters of the American Guild of Organists.

The church’s large instrument — with 6,366 pipes in 111 ranks it’s slightly larger than the Disney Hall instrument and one of the largest in Southern California — was originally built by the Aeolian-Skinner company in the “American Classic” style. It’s eminently suited for French literature, and Chen’s program leaned heavily on that genre, beginning with a probing performance of Marcel Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in G Minor.

As was the case with Carpenter’s program, Chen used several transcriptions in her recital but what a difference in choices! After the Dupré, Chen played Leon Roques’ transcription of Debussy’s Arabesque Suite No. 2, using a variety of registrations (including the balcony Echo organ) to achieve graceful effects — what a difference this piece makes when played on the organ. That sense of graceful delicacy continued with a playful performance of four movements from Fauré’s Dolly Suite, Op. 56, as arranged by Maurice Clerc.

To conclude the first half, Chen was joined by violinist Lewis Wong, whom she met in 2005 while they were studying at Juilliard. Their vehicle was the final two movements of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 2 for Flute and Piano that the pair transcribed winningly for organ and violin. Except for a couple of fleeting moments, this was the most un-Prokofiev piece I’ve ever heard but Chen and Wong played it with lightly and partnered each other sensitively.

After intermission, Chen concluded with Maurice Duruflé’s Prelude, Adagio and Chorale Variations on Veni Creator, a performance that began in mysterious quiet and gradually built to a dramatic, full-throated conclusion. Chen’s elegant performing style is a pleasure to watch and her registration choices and prodigious technique made this a highly pleasurable evening from first note to last.

For the single encore, Chen and Wong continued their emphasis on lyrical grace with a Taiwanese folk song, which translates as Anticipating the Spring.
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Hemidemisemiquavers:
• During a preconcert dinner, Robert Prichard was made an honorary life member of the Los Angeles AGO chapter. Prichard was organist for nearly 30 years at Pasadena Presbyterian Church (during the last decade he was also music director) and was instrumental in designing the Aeolian-Skinner organ when it was installed in the church’s old sanctuary in 1961. Prichard is currently organist and music director at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Alhambra.
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

OVERNIGHT REVIEW: Organist Cameron Carpenter at Walt Disney Concert Hall

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
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Cameron Carpenter, organist
Sunday, May 8, 2011 • Walt Disney Concert Hall
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Organist Cameron Carpenter is either a genius or one of the world’s great musical eccentrics. Sometimes the two go together (pianists Vladimir Horowitz and Glenn Gould spring to mind as examples). Last night, the 30-year-old Carpenter made his Walt Disney Concert Hall recital debut with a performance that was either (a) glorious, (b) crazy, (c) mind-blowing or (d) all of the above, depending on your tastes. He got sounds out of the Disney Hall organ that nobody else could conceive; the same could be said for many of the pieces he played.

Through it all, Carpenter remains unique, although in many ways, this was a decidedly non-Carpenter program: no cutesy pops stuff, no ragging on the quality of the instrument, no white top or jeans (he wore a black tunic jacket, adorned subtly with his trademark Swarovski crystals, in the first half and a black mesh-net shirt in the second; black pants and shoes both halves). His playing style is as sparse as his thin, albeit muscular frame — in a “Sunday Morning” interview several years ago, he said he burns through 5,000 calories a day, including drinking three gallons of whole milk daily and it’s easy to see why. Since he never announces his program ahead of time, he talks between selections; many organists do this but few, if any, engage the audience so completely. At one point in the second half, when he had to restart a piece after resetting a couple of pistons; he told the audience, “The organ is saying to me, ‘you want me to do what???”

His first half included three pieces you’d get from many organists — Bach’s Toccata in F, Brahms Prelude and Fugue in G minor and Franck’s Chorale No. 1 in E Major — but he played them like no other organist would: the Bach dazzlingly fast and thunderously loud, the Brahms with the widest range of registrations possible, and the Franck in a way that brought out lines and notes that often disappear in organ haze. His concepts weren’t to everyone’s tastes but the same was often said of Horowitz and Gould.

In between this trio, Carpenter played his own Serenade and Fugue, or as he called it, his homage to Bach, written (in 7 days) because he didn’t like Liszt’s Prelude and Fugue on the name B-A-C-H. It was also, ironically, the only piece of the evening for which he used a score. Liszt also appeared at the end of the first half in two sparkling Carpenter transcriptions: the Transcendental Étude No. 5 in B-flat (Feux follets) and the Étude No. 3 (La campanella).

The second half of the program consisted of three more Carpenter transcriptions, beginning Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture. This program was billed as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Brahms Unbound” series, which means that if you attended the Phil’s concert in the afternoon you heard two quite different takes on this familiar overture. Carpenter’s concept was big and bold but this was just a warm up for the balance of the program, which began with his rendering of the Bach/Busoni Chaconne in D minor (which, since Bach originally wrote the piece for solo violin, meant this was a transcription of a transcription). You had to listen hard to imagine the original piece, but Carpenter’s take was elegant in its own way.

The concert concluded with the final movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 (to quote the late Anna Russell, “I’m not making this up”). Carpenter explained that he wrote the piece at age 15 only to realize when he finished that the was work was “unplayable.” He set it aside for 15 years and picked it up again seven months ago; last night, essentially, was the work’s world premiere.

A century ago, when orchestras were far less prevalent than they are today, organists often used to transcribe symphonic works but not, I suspect, anything like this. If you know Mahler’s 5th, what Carpenter did with it was amazing; if you don’t, it was long, complex and bewildering. Like everything else (except for his own Serenade), he played it from memory, a mind-boggling achievement in itself.
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

OVERNIGHT REVIEW: Gustavo Dudamel and L.A. Philharmonic open "Brahms Unbound"

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
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Los Angeles Philharmonic; Gustavo Dudamel, conductor; Leonidas Kavokos, violin
Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C minor and Academic Festival Overture;
Dutilleux: L’arbre des songes (The Tree of Dreams)
Friday, May 6, 2011 • Walt Disney Concert Hall
Next performance: Sunday at 2 p.m.
Info: www.laphil.com
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Success is a mercurial word when it comes to evaluating conductors but at least one measure of that elusive quality is how any maestro (or maestra) handles “meat the potatoes” repertory staples, including the music of Johannes Brahms.

For the next five weeks, Gustavo Dudamel — the 30-year-old Venezuelan who is completing his second season as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic — is going to show us at least some of his thoughts and feelings about Brahms’ four symphonies and Ein Deutsches Requiem under the banner of “Brahms Unbound” at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

This week’s concerts feature Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture and the Symphony No. 1, and if last night’s performance is any indication, success will be just one of the laudatory words that will be heaped upon Dudamel and the Phil by the time the festival concludes in the first week of June.

Dudamel and Co. opened the evening with a stylish and rhythmically precise rendition of the Academic Festival Overture, highlighting the four student songs that Brahms worked into the 10-minute piece.

That was a foretaste of what was to come with the first symphony after intermission. Conducting without a score, Dudamel seemed to shape every note and phrase, beginning the opening measures, which he took at an ultra-luxurious tempo. Dudamel had a lot to say about this familiar work and his concepts kept the audience fully involved throughout. He also took a few seconds extra between the first and second and second and third movements to let people exhale, although he moved almost without pause from the third movement to the fourth.

The final two movements were typical Dudamel; you may not have liked everything he had to say but what he elicited from the orchestra was compelling. The third movement began lyrically, then moved forward with sense of urgency. The final movement opened very slowly and softly but Dudamel never relaxed the tension for an instant, so that the opening bars moved inexorably toward the familiar main theme and from thence on to the dramatic, cathartic ending.

Dudamel was in his element on the podium; although his gestures weren’t as histrionic as they can be when he’s conducting Mahler, for example, every movement meant something musically and both his smile and fierce concentration were infectious. The orchestra played as it always seems to do when the boss is at the helm: at the peak of their collective game and the audience was, of course, on their feet at the end.

The original concept for “Brahms Unbound” was to pair the major Brahms works with new pieces, including three world premieres and one U.S. premieres. The U.S. premiere — Sofia Gubaidulina’s Glorious Percussion — remains scheduled for May 19-22 (along with Brahms’ Symphony No. 2) but the other works have bitten the dust: Polish composer Henryk Gorecki died last November before completing his Symphony No. 4 and Peter Lieberson passed away last month, apparently before finishing his percussion concerto.

No such fate befell Osvaldo Golijov; unfortunately, as has been the case too often of late, the Argentine composer simply failed to complete his Violin Concerto in time for it to receive its world premiere this week. Instead, Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos was the soloist in Henri Dutilleux’s violin concerto L’arbre des songes, which is subtitled The Tree of Dreams.

This was the first LAPO performance of this work, which was completed in 1985 and written for Isaac Stern. It’s a brooding, mysterious, complicated piece that has four movements tied together with three interludes (as Dutilleux termed them), a structural device that he employed in his previous cello concerto, according to the program note by John Henken.

Kavakos, who was to have been the soloist for the Golijov concerto, brought his considerable talents to Dutilleux’s score, instead. That included a rich tone and a thoughtful traversal of Dutilleux’s meanderings. Dudamel and the orchestra accompanied sympathetically.
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Hemidemisemiquavers:
• Dudamel continues to offer beautiful lessons on how to accept audience following a successful performance, wading into the orchestra to acknowledge individuals and entire sections, turning the orchestra around to acknowledge applause from all sides, including the rear, and taking his own bows from deep within the ensemble, arms around his musical colleagues.
• After the final performance of this program tomorrow, next up on the agenda is Ein Deutches Requiem (A German Requiem) next week (Thursday-Sunday), paired with another violin concerto, the West Coast premiere of Steven Mackey’s Beautiful Passing. Leila Josefowicz will be the soloist in the concerto (Mackey wrote the piece for her). The Los Angeles Master Chorale and soloists Christine Schäfer, soprano, and Matthias Goerne, baritone, will sing in the Requiem.
• Both pieces have in common the death of the composers’ mothers. Mackey’s mother died during the composition of his work in 2008; the title comes from her last words, “Please tell everyone I had a beautiful passing.” After Brahms’ mother died in 1865, he inserted the fifth movement into A German Requiem, in which a soprano soloist sings the prophet Isaiah’s words, “As one whom his own mother comforteth, so I will comfort you.” Info: www.laphil.com
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

Five-Spot: What caught my eye on May 5, 2011

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
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Each Thursday morning, I list five events that peak my interest. It’s a “six pack” this week; that makes up for listing only four last week. As usual, there’s one with no admission charge.

This week’s grouping:
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• Today, tomorrow and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Mark Morris Dance Group and Los Angeles Opera
One of America’s premiere terpsichorean companies (this is its 30th anniversary season), the Mark Morris Dance Group joins forces with Los Angeles Opera for the first time in four performances of L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, a work that Morris first choreographed in 1988 to music of George Frederic Handel and the poetry of John Milton.

The production features 24 dancers, and four soloists: sopranos Hei-Kyung Hong and Sarah Coburn, tenor Barry Banks and bass-baritone John Relyea. Grant Gershon conducts the LA Opera Orchestra. Alastair Macaulay of the New York Times wrote one of the most glowing reviews I’ve ever read when this production played in Manhattan last August as part of Lincoln Center’s “Mostly Mozart Festival.” (LINK). INFO: www.laopera.com

• Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. in Walt Disney Concert Hall
Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic open “Brahms Unbound”
Dudamel and the Phil conclude their 2010-2011 Disney Hall season over the next five weeks with programs that pair major works by Brahms with contemporary pieces. This week it’s the Symphony No. 1 in C Minor joined by and Henri Dutileux’s 1985 work, L’arbre des songes, a violin concerto whose title translates The Tree of Dreams. Leonidas Kavakos will be the soloist in the concerto. Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture opens each evening. INFO: www.laphil.com

• Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. in Ambassador Auditorium
Psaadena Symphony; Maximiano Valdés, conductor; Chu-Fang Huang, piano
In the final concert of the PSO’s 82nd season, the Chilean-born Valdés conducts Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in A minor, with young Chinese pianist Chu-Fang Huang as soloist. INFO: www.pasadenasymphony-pops.org

• Saturday at 8 p.m. in Pasadena Presbyterian Church; Sunday at 2 p.m. in First Presbyterian Church, Santa Monica
Musica Angelica plays Bach’s Brandenburgs
Music Director Martin Haselböck leads his early-music ensemble in Nos. 3, 5 and 6 of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, along with the Double Concerto for violin and oboe and Suite No. 2 for flute and orchestra. Soloists will be oboist Gonzalo Xavier Ruiz, flutist Stephen Schultz, and Musica Angelica’s concertmaster Ilia Korol. The orchestra will just have returned from performing these works at the famed Musikverein in Vienna on Monday.
INFO: www. musicaangelica.org

• Sunday at 7:30 p.m. in Walt Disney Concert Hall
Cameron Carpenter, organist
This is a great 24 hours for organ lovers. Cameron Carpenter is either one of the most electrifying or exasperating organists playing today, depending on your tastes. The dichotomy begins with his concert attire (usually white sequined T-shirt with jeans) but it doesn’t stop there. If you’ve never seen this young virtuoso perform before, you can view several performances via YouTube HERE.

Typical of Carpenter, he doesn’t announce his “official” program in advance. This concert was originally billed as part of the L.A. Phil’s “Brahms Unbound” series and listed Carpenter’s transcriptions of the composer’s Academic Festival Overture and Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, WoO 10. Subsequent publicity is saying the program will be drawn from “Jazz etudes by Nikolai Kapustin; piano encores by Vladimir Horowitz, Arcadi Volodos, and Cyprien Katsaris; compositions by Brahms, Bach, Carpenter, Chopin, Dupré, Grainger, Hanson, Honegger, Liszt, and Ravel; as well as film scores by Gershwin, Hisaishi, and Williams.”

Whatever … it should all be a hoot on the Disney Hall organ, or as Terry Riley dubbed it, “Hurricane Mama.” INFO: www.laphil.com

And the weekend’s “free admission” program (actually, it’s on Monday, who but who’s counting?) …

Monday at 8 p.m. at Pasadena Presbyterian Church
Chelsea Chen, organist
When I heard the San Diego native in 2008 at Disney Hall, I was highly impressed (LINK) and getting to hear her for free on PPC's 112-rank Aeolian-Skinner organ should be quite a treat. The program lists music by Dupré, Debussy, Fauré, Prokofiev (with guest violinist Lewis Wong), and Duruflé. This concert is co-sponsored by the Los Angeles and Orange County chapters of the American Guild of Organists but it’s open to the public. INFO: www.laago.org
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

NEWS AND LINKS: DGG boxed recording of Carlo Maria Gulini and Chicago Symphony to be released July 5

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News



Deutsche Grammophon’s new retrospective of recordings by Carlo Maria Giulini with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is scheduled to be released in the U.S. on July 5. Here’s the rundown on what will be on this five-CD boxed set.

CD 1
*SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 4 in C minor, D 417 Tragic
*DVORÁK: Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op.95 From the New World
 
CD 2
*SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 9 in C major, D 944 The Great
*PROKOFIEV: Symphony No. 1 in D major, op. 25 Symphonie classique
 
CD 3
*DVORÁK: Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op.88
*MUSSORGSKY/RAVEL: Pictures at an Exhibition
 
CD 4
MAHLER: Symphony No. 9 (Movements I-III)
 
CD 5
MAHLER: Symphony No. 9 (Movement IV)
SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D 759 Unfinished
*BRITTEN: Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, op.31
Robert Tear, tenor / Dale Clevenger, horn
 
* Restored to the catalogue

As you can see by the asterisks, most of these recordings have not been available for some time.

Last September, DGG released a boxed set of recordings that the revered Italian conductor made while music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (LINK). EMI Angel Classics has also issued a set of its recordings with Giulini and the CSO (LINK). Giulini’s 97th birthday would have been May 9; he died in 2005.
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

NEWS AND LINKS: New Mexico Symphony shuts its doors

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

Add the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra to the list of ensembles that have fallen prey to financial troubles. The NMSO filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy last week, a move that apparently spells the end of the orchestra that began in 1932. The balance of the orchestra’s season was cancelled and approximately 80 musicians and staff members lost their jobs. Click HERE for the Albuquerque Journal story.

It’s probably symptomatic of the orchestra’s problems that it couldn’t even handle its demise successfully. Although the decision was announced in the Albuquerque media on April 20, the orchestra posted no notice on its Web site about the Chapter 7 filing or the concert cancellations. According to several ticket holders, they received no information about the cancellations or what to do about the tickets they had already purchased. (The Journal story says they will not receive refunds and will be part of the bankruptcy claim.)

At least two-dozen people showed up at the National Hispanic Cultural Center for the scheduled concert this afternoon, only to be told of the news by an apologetic box office representative. I was one of them — my wife and I are on a vacation trip and I had planned on attending the concert. I talked to several of the people who showed up and, while all knew the orchestra was in serious financial troubles, none knew of the cancellation or the Chapter 7 filing.

According to one story (LINK), orchestra musicians hope that a new ensemble can be formed. Orchestra members played a final “thank you” concert last night at the Popejoy Center, one of its two home halls (NHCC is the other).

Last month, the Philadelphia Orchestra filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, but it is continuing to perform concerts. The Louisville Orchestra is also in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings. Orchestras in Honolulu and San Jose have gone under in recent years and others, including the Pasadena Symphony, continue to battle through serious financial difficulties.
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

AROUND TOWN/MUSIC: Pasadena Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic prepare to conclude seasons

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
This column was originally printed today in the Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

The phrase “The beginning of the end” takes on two quite different meanings over the next month in Southern California’s classical music scene.

Next Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. in Ambassador Auditorium, Chilean-born conductor Maximiano Valdés will lead the Pasadena Symphony in the final concert of its 82nd season, conducting Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major with Chinese pianist Chu-Fang Huang as soloist.

Meanwhile on Thursday at 8 p.m. in Walt Disney Concert Hall, Gustavo Dudamel begins the final five weeks of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 92nd season with a survey entitled “Brahms Unbound,” which will feature all four Brahms symphonies and Ein Deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem) paired with other works, including a U.S. premiere, a West Coast premiere and (this weekend) a rarely performed piece that dates from 1985.

When the Pasadena Symphony was in long-range planning mode for its 2010-2011 season, Music Director Jorge Mester had planned on leading concerts in the orchestra’s long-time home, the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Then came the move to the smaller and acoustically superior Ambassador Auditorium. However, Ambassador wasn’t available for the final concert’s original date and Mester wasn’t free on May 7 so Valdés was engaged.

Subsequently, Mester and the orchestra parted ways and Valdés — currently music director of the Puerto Rico Symphony and head of that country’s prestigious Casals Festival — ended up becoming the last of five guest conductors during the current season.

Huang, the soloist for the Liszt second concerto, epitomizes one of the best aspects of Mester’s 25-year tenure as music director. Jorge had an uncanny ability to uncover young, relatively unknown artists and present them early in their career (e.g., Midori, Robert McDuffie, among others). The 25-year-old Huang would appear to fit in that category.

INFO: www.pasadenasymphony-pops.org

When Dudamel and the Philharmonic planned “Brahms Unbound” as the conclusion to their 2010-2011 season, each of the Brahms works was to be paired with a new work, including two world premieres. Two postponements and the death of Polish composer Henryk Gorecki last fall put the kibosh on that intriguing goal but the programs will, nonetheless, offer some interesting counterpoints to the question of what interpretative ideas Dudamel will bring to the ultra-familiar four symphonies and, in particular (to these ears, at any rate) A German Requiem.

This weekend’s concerts (Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoon) will pair Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 with Henri Dutileux’s 1985 work, L’arbre des songes, a violin concerto whose title translates The Tree of Dreams. Leonidas Kavakos will be the soloist.

Next weekend (also Thursday-Sunday) brings the West Coast premiere of another violin concerto: Steven Mackey’s Beautiful Passing, along with A German Requiem. The soloist in the Mackey work — which was inspired by the death of his mother and was premiered in 2008 in Manchester England — will be violinist Leila Josefowicz, for whom the concerto was written.

INFO: www.loaphil.com

Next Sunday evening brings one of the most eagerly awaited organ recitals in recent memory as Cameron Carpenter makes his first appearance playing the Walt Disney Concert Hall organ at 7:30 p.m. Carpenter is one of the most talented and flamboyant organist playing today; if you’ve never heard him, and especially if organ recitals aren’t your standard concert fare, this is one program you don’t want to miss.

Carpenter, who turns age 30 this year, rarely provides his program ahead of time, but the Phil says the music will be drawn from the following: Jazz etudes by Nikolai Kapustin; piano encores by Vladimir Horowitz, Arcadi Volodos, and Cyprien Katsaris; compositions by Brahms, Bach, Carpenter, Chopin, Dupré, Grainger, Hanson, Honegger, Liszt, and Ravel; as well as film scores by Finzi, Gershwin, Hisaishi and Williams.

INFO: www.laphil.com
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.