OVERNIGHT REVIEW: Los Angeles Philharmonic 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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Los Angeles Philharmonic; Gustavo Dudamel, conductor
John Adams: Tromba lontana; Esteban Benzecry: Rituales Amerindios;
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique
Friday, September 30, 2011 • Walt Disney Concert Hall
Next concerts: tonight at 8 p.m. and tomorrow at 2 p.m.ß
Info: www.laphil.com
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The 2011-2012 Los Angeles Philharmonic season, which opened last night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, is easily the most ambitious set of programs in Gustavo Dudamel’s three-year tenure as the orchestra’s music director and is quite likely the most wide-ranging repertoire for any United States orchestra.

This weekend’s performances of Argentine composer Esteban Benzecry’s Rituales Amerindios is one of four U.S. premieres for the season, along with seven world premieres and five west coast first-time performances. Nine of the works on the season are L.A. Phil commissions. And that doesn’t take into account the complete cycle of Mahler symphonies, with Dudamel leading both the Phil and his Simón Bolivár Symphony Orchestra for a month early next year in Los Angeles and then on tour in Caracas, or the beginning of the orchestra’s cycle of the Mozart/Da Ponte opera trilogy later in 2012.

Last night, after opening with John Adams’s fanfare in name only, Tromba lontana — notable for having trumpeters Tom Hooten and Christopher Still hiding amid Frank Gehry’s “overturned French fries” wooden pipes surrounding the organ loft — Benzecry’s 25-minute, three-movement tone poem got the list of premieres off to a rousing start.

In brief introductory remarks, Dudamel lauded the 41-year-old composer (who was born in Portugal and lives in Paris) as being able to create an amazing atmosphere of moods and colors, a description that was right on. Rituales Amerindios (Amerindian Rituals) is an important piece, another example of Dudamel’s vision — articulated when he was hired — to broaden the orchestra’s (and audience’s) musical framework to all of the Americas.

Written in 2008 on a commission from the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (the third ensemble that Dudamel heads) and dedicated to the conductor, Rituales Amerindios focuses on the roots, rhythms and mythology of three pre-Columbian Latin-American cultures: Aztec (in Mexico), Maya (southern Mexico) and Inca (Peru and other Andean countries).

Along the way, Benzecry manages to achieve a myriad of amazing sounds using only standard orchestra instruments, thus creating some magical effects. One example: during the first movement, Ehécatl (an Aztec wind god), Benzecry manages to conjure a violent storm without using a wind machine as Richard Strauss did in his Alpine Symphony.

The second movement, Chaac (a Mayan water god) sounded like a Latin American version of Debussy’s La Mer with a forest containing some of Messiaen’s birds added into the mix.

The final movement, Illapa (an Incan thunder god), used the Phil’s percussionists — Joseph Pereira, timpanist, along with Raynor Carroll, Perry Dreiman, Alexander Frederick and Nicholas Stoup — who hammered, rattled, rang, and otherwise manipulated an impressive array of percussion instruments (glockenspiel, bass drum, suspended cymbals, bongos, metal wind chimes, rainstick, claves, tam-tams, vibraslap, guiro, maracas, grelots, bamboo wind chimes, mark tree, wood blocks, water gong, slapstick, marimba, tom-toms, vibraphone, and congas) plus Joanne Pearce Martin on piano, celesta and Lou Anne Neil on harp — to create not only massive waves of thunder and lightning but also lead the way in a riotous conclusion of orchestral color.

Dudamel conducted confidently (although he did use a score) and the orchestra — as it usually does with Latin American fare — played the piece as if they were born to it. The audience responded exuberantly, particularly for the composer who was in the audience and participated in the preconcert lecture, as well.

Hector Berlioz was the first significant composer to create thematic tone poems, using instruments to create an amazing palette of colorful sounds, so concluding this weekend’s concerts with Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique made eminent sense. Perhaps appropriately, since the work is an autobiographical setting of the composer hallucinating, Dudamel’s concept was schizophrenic with moments of sublime beauty concluding with a haywire ending.

The Phil’s management goes all out for performances of this 55-minute sprawl, employing four harpist for a relatively few minutes of playing in the second movement, four timpanists (playing on two sets of instruments), along two gigantic bells for the Dies Irae portion of the final movement that look like scions of the Liberty Bell (minus the crack, of course) and make enough noise to wake the dead.

Last night, Dudamel opened the first movement, Reveries:Passions, in unhurried luxury, jumped (literally) feet first into the pulsating middle section, and brought the final cadences down to a rich, mellow conclusion. The ball scene emphasized elegance. The third movement — Scene in the Country — featured moments of supreme magic, particularly in the plaintive English horn solos from Carolyn Hove and the wistful echoing oboist, Marion Arthur Kuszyk, offstage at the rear of the hall.

To Dudamel’s mind, the March to the Scaffold is a doom-laden affair, while the final movement, Dream of a Witches Sabbath, becomes a raucous celebration of evil (overshadowed by those massive bells, of course). For about 50 minutes, it was riveting. Unfortunately, Dudamel raced so quickly to the end in the final measures that ensemble precision got jettisoned overboard. Nonetheless, the evening fully lived up to the description from Asadour Santourian in the preconcert lecture: Starts nocturnally, journeys to Latin America, ends in hell.
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Hemidemisemiquavers:
• The preconcert lecture by Santrourian, artistic advisor and administrator of the Aspen Music Festival and School, is worth hearing, in part because Benzecry showed up to deliver his thoughts on Rituales Amerindios. Since the composer struggles with English, were I in charge I might have had him talk in Spanish and have someone on hand to translate, if for no other reason than to make him feel more comfortable.
• Five of the Phil’s new members are spotlighted in the printed program: Principal Horn Andrew Bain from Australia; Lyndon Johnston Taylor, who rejoins the orchestra as principal second violinist after serving for four years as assistant concertmaster of the New Zealand Symphony; Nathan Cole, first associate concertmaster, who actually began this summer at Hollywood Bowl, and his wife, Akiko Tarumoto, who returns to the orchestra as a second violinist (both had been with the Chicago Symphony); and Michael Myers, who joins the trumpet section.
• As noted in my review of Tuesday’s gala concert (LINK), Thomas Hooten, principal trumpet of the Atlanta Symphony, is filling in this month while Donald Green is on sabbatical and Daniel Rothmuller is back this season serving as associate principal cellist emeritus.
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.