This coming Saturday is the official opening concert of the L.A. Phil’s exciting new festival, West Coast, Left Coast, but performances introducing the concept have now begun. REDCAT showed a “re-interpretation” of a noted performance piece with music by Morton Subotnick and choreography by Anna Halprin, and Jacaranda Music had another full audience for its concert last night as a prelude to the festival itself.

Parades & Changes, the Halprin-Subotnick performance collaboration from 1965 is coming to New York, and it provides a fascinating hour. The use of electronics in music has advanced so much in the past forty years, and can now be heard so often, that Subotnick’s music no longer sounded as radical or disturbing as it must have seemed then, but it held its own and contributed to the performance, which didn’t seem at all dated. When I got home, however, I did a search to find my LP of Subotnick’s Silver Apples of the Moon, once played so often. Gone. I don’t know when, or how. Surely the California pioneers in electronics in music should have had a place in a West Coast, Left Coast Festival!

The Jacaranda concert Saturday night was pure delight, and perfectly aligned with the festival’s theme. The program opened and closed with John Adams: Road Movies (1995) for violin and piano to open, and Shaker Loops (1978) for string sextet to close. The Denali Quartet brought in two friends to round out the performance of “Loops”, and this was a pleasure to listen to. The hit, however, was early Lou Harrison: Solstice (1949-1950) for celesta, tack piano, and flute, oboe, trumpet, two cellos and bass (including an instrument on its back, providing its strings as the target of mallets). This was Harrison attracted by Eastern sounds, but not yet comfortable with how much use to make of them. But it’s a lovely work. The fourth work on the program was by Ingram Marshall, whose work I don’t know. The concerts by the Master Chorale and by the Phil’s New Music Ensemble in a Green Umbrella concert will also give us works by Marshall, and I’ll wait until I’ve heard more before commenting.

The West Coast, Left Coast Festival looks on paper as if it can be more exciting then the last festival, Minimalist Jukebox, curated by Adams. Here’s the listing of events. And the LA Times has an excellent essay on Adams, here.

Today’s Philharmonic concert featured Luciano Berio and Franz Schubert, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. The concert opened with Berio’s commentary on the fragments left from Schubert’s ideas for his Tenth Symphony, Rendering (1989). Instead of developing a hybrid work “in the style of” Schubert, Berio supplemented the fragments with his own ideas, carefully orchestrated so that the listener could distinguish between real and restoration. We then ascended to the higher realms with Berio’s Folk Songs (1964, with the 1973 version for orchestral accompaniment). The singer? Dawn Upshaw. Dudamel closed the concert with Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. The Dude is gaining control of the audience; in today’s concert he got everyone to be silent for over a minute after the last notes as he slowly lowered his arms. Last week’s concert, Verdi’s Requiem, was the only concert so far without a major work written after 1900.

January has brought a richness of performances of contemporary music. At the half-way point on the calendar this has already been a marvelous month, but there’s much more to come. Each of the major music organizations across the county seems to have decided on some exceptional music. I haven’t been able to attend everything: too many tickets, too many nights. Wouldn’t it be nice to be paid to attend the concerts? Wouldn’t it be nice just to afford them all? Oh, well, the old suit will last another year or so before replacement.

The Phil is leading the way, of course, as appropriate to our major music organization. The number of concerts left for Salonen as Music Director is now down to single digits. His valedictory concerts will be of Stravinsky the radical-reactionary (Oedipus Rex and Symphony of Psalms). But the concerts before that all focus on some brilliant new works, Philharmonic commissions or co-commissions. Yes, we’ll have Dudamel, but we’ll certainly miss Esa-Pekka! Last Sunday when he walked on stage to begin the first concert of the year, the applause continued as he stepped onto the podium. The applause continued. He finally had to turn to the audience to acknowledge their welcome before Disney Hall became still enough for the concert.

The first program of the year gave an engrossing, beautiful new work by Arvo Part, Symphony No. 4, Los Angeles. In a rare gesture, Universal Edition published the score of the work, making it available on the internet in December. The symphony is scored for strings, harp, and percussion; often it presents the sound of a single instrument vibrating in the surrounding silence. The work is a meditation, and the thoughts of the symphony are of angels, not of the city named in the subtitle. While a meditation, the work is not restful and offers no easy resolution; the music is tonal, but wavers between major and minor. The score reveals (see the third movement in particular) how Part has the orchestra in two different keys. I had not realized how much the music had drawn me into its own world until we returned from intermission. I had thought that it would be jarring to end the music with Ax playing the Brahms first piano concerto. I found, instead, that the muscular tonality of the Brahms came as a release. The recording of the Part will be a must-buy.

And then this week, another noteworthy work: Kaija Saariaho‘s La Passion de Simone (2006), with Dawn Upshaw in the Peter Sellars production featuring Michael Schumacher as dancer. This Phil co-commission has been withdrawn from the past two seasons, first because of health, last year because of scheduling conflicts. Oh, the wait was worth it. The music shimmers. Dawn Upshaw is peerless. The Sellars dramatization amplifies the language. I must admit, however, that I am not captured by the personality and philosophy of Simone Weil, but I could just concentrate on the music. One point on the artistry of Dawn Upshaw. We could see a TV screen above the stage, facing down to the stage. We wondered what that was used for. Then we saw that Upshaw spent a climactic scene flat on her back in the position of a crucifixion. The screen was for her to see Salonen while singing from the floor. This work is being presented in alternation with the premiere of a new work for orchestra and two pianos by Louis Andriessen. We hear this on Sunday afternoon.

The marvelous Jacaranda series resumed its two-year season celebrating Messiaen. We spoke while walking from the parking structure that we wouldn’t be able to see and talk to Betty Freeman that night, and we will miss her. Jacaranda presented a lovely program of Messiaen and his students, Boulez, Murail, Benjamin, and a follower, Takemitsu. The musicians are skilled, the works are well-selected. We now re-schedule other tickets to attend a Jacaranda concert. Our revitalized Monday Evening Concerts presented an evening of American music. Their program this week started at a high with Kazi Pitelka playing Morton Feldman‘s The Viola in My Life II (1971), and this seems to resonate with some of the sounds of the rest of the month. And we had the first L. A. performances of Rzewski‘s Pocket Symphony (2000) and 96 (2003). We didn’t have tickets for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and their performance, with Yo-Yo Ma, of Golijov’s Azul, in its West Coast premiere.

And coming up we have the Phil’s Green Umbrella concert and Southwest Chamber Music and its program of music by composers who are women: Gabriela Ortiz, Joan Huang, Lera Auerbach, and Thea Musgrave.

The Los Angeles Master Chorale gave the premiere of a new work by Eve Beglarian for full chorus and two Persian instruments.  The work is “Sang”, Persian for “stone”, taken from a Persian parable that appealed to Beglarian; she added texts in Hebrew and Septuagint Greek from the Hebrew scriptures.  Her program notes are here.  An English translation of the texts was given in the program, but no attempt was made to provide surtitles; the thing to do was to relax and be absorbed into the sounds.

The work was the first in a planned series of commissions for the Master Chorale, LA is the World, in which a particular cultural background will be honored in works for chorus.  With her selection of a Persian parable at the center of the work, Beglarian decided to link Persian musicians with western singers to create a work compatible with both traditions.  Supporting the vocalists, sometimes as accompanists, sometimes in the lead, were Manoochehr Sadeghi playing the santur, a 72-string hammered dulcimer, and Pejman Hadadi on percussion, notably several sizes of daf, a frame drum, and the tombak, a goblet-shaped drum.  The instrumental duets seemed to successfully blend improvisational heritage with western structures so that the flow between chorus and instruments was smooth.

A commission of this sort should have incorporated recording and distribution.  It deserves hearing.  I’d certainly like to hear it again, but it may take the Chorale three years or so before the work gets on another program.  But are there that many brave boards out there, boards that will program a choral work with words in Persian, Hebrew and Greek that requires Persian instrumentalists?

The Master Chorale audience is really fairly open to newer music, especially for an audience that makes me seem young when I mingle with them.  The program last night began with James MacMillan’s Magnificat (1999) and Nunc Dimittis (2000) with David Goode on the WDCH organ.  The second half of the program was Arvo Part’s Te deum (1984-1985; 1992 revision).  This masterwork requires a string orchestra, piano, recorded tape of a wind harp giving the sustaining pitches throughout the work, and three choruses.  Grant Gershon placed the men’s chorus in the left-center rafters and the women’s chorus in the right center, placing the mixed chorus on stage behind the strings.  The sound was lovely.

The Part work was also a nice link to the Philharmonic’s “Shadow of Stalin” series of programs, which ended that afternoon with the orchestra playing Prokofiev’s complete Alexander Nevsky to accompany the Eisenstein film.  The music is glorious, but the film isn’t.  Imagine putting together the three worst WW II films out of Republic studios, and you approach the jingoism of the film.  (The music was a re-thinking of the film score, starting from Prokofiev’s cantata and applying it backwards to fit the movie, ignoring some dialogue to increase the musical values.)  The preceding Thursday was a concert of composers searching for musical freedom and using folk music to reflect nationalism and implied anti-Soviet resistance.  Ligeti’s Concert Romanesc (1951) was an Enesco-like work that was still controversial enough to get banned for twenty years after a single rehearsal.  Lutoslawski’s brilliantly-colored Concerto for Orchestra (1954) was able to pass.  Karel Husa’s powerful Music for Prague 1968 was the statement of an emigre against the re-conquering of Czechoslovakia after the brief “Prague Spring”.

Last week’s concert was by three young composers, writing wild music until the 1936 crackdown came.  Gavriil Popov wrote a suite from his Komsomol Patron of Electrification, which opened the concert; the score was ready for release when the Government objected to contemporary music and it went unheard for 46 years.  Alexander Mosolov wrote The Iron Foundry in 1926-1927 as part of a ballet (which was actually performed in Hollywood Bowl in 1931 as part of a different ballet) — great clanging music by a composer not able to adapt to new rules.  And there was a young composer named Shostakovich who wrote astounding operas:  The Nose and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.  We heard the composer’s suite from the former and the Act I, Scene 3 from the latter (the scene with the xxx-rated trombone part).  Shostakovich survived, of course, but never again with the freedom, and never another opera.