Comment: The LA Phil calms more

A year ago, on October 24, to be exact, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra celebrated its 100th anniversary. The orchestra was on top of the world. Born during a pandemic, he has grown more than a century than any other. In terms of vision, ambition, budget and outreach, the LA Phil had become the orchestra of the future.

Less than six months later, in the grip of the worst pandemic since the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, the LA Phil hit its lowest point.

Even with the best-case scenario, the LA Phil will, by next summer, be able to mount a full season of the Hollywood Bowl, he will have lost about $ 90 million in projected revenue, which with the cancellation of the spring, summer and full 2020-21 seasons.

Every orchestra on earth, of course, has been affected by the coronavirus. Most put on a brave face with face masks on and somehow tried to act like there could be some semblance of continuation. But in the early months of the pandemic, the LA Phil publicly showed little leadership. One minute it was in the middle of a revolutionary and radically prescient People’s Power festival; the next minute, the power was summarily cut off.

At the orchestras’ last full concert, a Sunday matinee at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on March 8, Gustavo Dudamel led an inspiring performance of Duke Ellingtons Three Black Kings, MLK being the Last King. Before long America would start a deep reckoning with African-American neglect. Lukewarm virtual classical music tiptoeing through the coronavirus seemed inadequate for now and for the orchestras’ mission.

This may seem counterintuitive given more than half a century of media music directors such as Zubin Mehta, Andr Previn, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Gustavo Dudamel, but live events and the physical spaces in which they perform have inspired LA Phils’ greatest breakthroughs. and innovations. The orchestra is inseparable from its halls, the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl, and is set to expand to the new YOLA venue in Inglewood that Frank Gehry has designed for the youth orchestra and program of education of orchestras. On the flip side, a lot of orchestral media experiments, especially showing concerts in movie theaters and attempts to introduce visual display into Disney, have failed to make an impression. sustainable.

But in the last seven months without a gig, the LA Phil has actually tested all traditional music media: radio, TV, CD, streaming video, DVD / Blu-ray and even vinyl. Each in its own way reminds us of what was missing. But each also adds a dimension. The blessings are very mixed.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is how well old media retain their effectiveness, and nothing more than in the dazzling analog recordings Mehta made for British label Decca with the orchestra between 1967 and 1977 at Royce Hall. . The recorded sound was meant to knock your socks off. Remastered and gathered in a new box of 41 CDs, the discs, packaged in miniatures of their original covers, still are.

These recordings, which were released in LP on the London label in this country, allowed the LA Phil to gain a reputation for glitter. Repertory of Mehtas focusing on masterpieces of the late 19th century and the 20th century Symphonies by Bruckner, Mahler and Tchaikovsky, poems by Strauss. The Rite of Spring, The Planets, the Varse Coins and, of course, Star Wars had only one thing in mind: to dazzle.

Hi-fi addicts have swallowed them up. The sophisticated laughed. The LA Times could not have been more dismissive.

A little relentless spice of Mehtas goes a long way (it took me a few months to work on the set), but the performances exalt a fabulously uplifting sense of optimism. There is not only a feeling of immediacy in these spectacular sounds, but also a real relevance.

Most surprising of all is William Krafts’ recording Contextures: Riots Decade 60. Commissioned by the orchestra to contextualize civil rights and the Vietnam War uprisings in Los Angeles, the score premiered on April 4, the day of Martin Luther King Jr. s assassination. When the news reached Kraft, the orchestra’s lead percussionist, he instantly inserted a reference to We Shall Overcome at the end.

At the other extreme, which is not really extreme, Deutsche Grammophon has just released Must the Devil Have all the Good Tunes on vinyl. The live recording of the performance of John Adams’ new piano concerto, written for Yuja Wang as soloist and conductor of Dudamel, was first released for download in April. But gritty, jazzy (not that different from Contextures), this is a score made for LP. The download, heard in high resolution, has an aperture that approximates the acoustics of Disney Hall, as if you were there but not really. Vinyl makes no such claims, with the feathery and rich quality of the recorded music being an art form in its own right. In addition, the record includes backing notes.

Esa-Pekka Salonen, left, Zubin Mehta, middle, and Gustavo Dudamel, right, bow after jointly conducting the Daniel Bjarnasons From Space I Saw Earth premiere to wrap up the Los Angeles Philharmonics 100th Anniversary Gala at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

The two most notable events of the short orchestral season events were the Dudamels cycle of Charles Ives’ four symphonies and the 100th anniversary gala in which Mehta, Salonen and Dudamel all participated. The Ives Symphonies are an important addition to the catalog, the best of all recorded cycles. But it remains a document. The Fourth Symphony, one of Dudamels’ most impressive accomplishments, was a surround sound experience that can’t help but lose something in the recorded translation no matter how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you spend. into speakers.

The same goes for Danil Bjarnasons From Space I Saw Earth’s premiere for three orchestras and three conductors, which the LA Phil commissioned for its centenary gala. This concert was broadcast on PBS and is now available as a home video. It is heartwarming to see Mehta, Salonen and Dudamel, each a generation apart, each a virtuoso conductor and each from remote regions of the Earth (respectively Mumbai, Helsinki, Caracas), bring an individual style to which the orchestra immediately, impeccably and reacts happily. No other great orchestra that I know of looks so happy on camera.

There is considerable fun to be had here, including the apprehension of the details in performances impossible to grasp in the audience. But the spectator is always a stranger. Voyeurs we also remain in the attempts of orchestras to connect via radio, television and streaming. To his credit, however, the LA Phil has found ways to retain his personality in each.

Spring, with everyone locked in, KUSC brought us Brian Lauritzens reassuring weekly chats and playlists from Dudamel, Salonen, and other members of the LA Phil family as we needed to know everyone was going. well. In the summer, PBS featured weekly trips to the Hollywood Bowl past, around themes such as Mexican music, Broadway, jazz, and more.

For fall, the LA Phil has done its best to connect through weekly streams of half-hour concerts shot on the stage of an otherwise empty Hollywood Bowl. This is something new. Rather than imitating a concert, the point of view is that you are do not there you can’t be there either. String musicians wear masks. Wind and brass play behind plastic shields. The orchestra is small, with rotating musicians, and everyone is left behind.

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the second act of the Tristan Project with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Bill Viola’s video at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Again, each program has a theme, a Latin accent on the first two, black for the third and fourth. So far the results have been hit and miss. Production values ​​are high. Bowl and Los Angeles favorites from the air, and the edgy music video of the orchestra or MTV-style soloists, are less about listening than watching. It means a harpist’s nail, bassoonists’ lips, Dudamels hair follicles. The fourth program was dedicated to jazz singer Andra Day and her band. The fifth program, which is not available in advance, is the first to offer a full Beethovens Seventh symphony. A clip from a future stream with jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington seems to work the best. The LA Phil website, which isn’t the easiest to navigate, offers some helpful extras.

The problem is, once you’re on the site, you’re tempted to look at what we’re missing. The month of November was to begin with the return of the Tristan project. Wagners ‘opera with video by Bill Viola and directed by Peter Sellars is still LA Phils’ most impressive multimedia event. Now, if only the LA Phil were to find a way to digitize a bit of this kind of adventure, Sound / Stage could become Game / Change.