Sequenza21

Jacob ter Veldhuis might be the best composer you’ve never heard of. Let me explain.

Start with his 1999 piece “Heartbreakers,” which takes recordings of American daytime television talk shows like Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, and Oprah, and sets them within the context of a Jazz ensemble. Ter Veldhuis uses the technique, pioneered by Steve Reich in pieces like “Different Trains,” of playing fragments of speech and doubling the melodic patterns with the instruments. Musically, the result is a sort of post-minimalist jazz jam-fest, complete with improvised solos and speech clips sliced and diced and repeated until the meanings of the words are subsumed by the musical content. The bulk of the source material for the piece is crack addicted prostitutes being confronted by their mothers on Jerry Springer, and ter Veldhuis treats their plight with a fascinating combination of humor and sympathy, and that’s where the comparison with Steve Reich becomes moot. (more…)

This week’s Los Angeles Philharmonic program honored 1960, with three works composed in that year, a composer of a fourth (and major) work who was born that year, and performed by a soloist born that year.  I’ll start with the last point.  The soloist was Dawn Upshaw.  Adjectives are inadequate.  Looking up quotations to find some marvelous comment on “dawn” wasn’t useful.  I simply cannot imagine another singer performing the two works at any level approaching her artistry.

The program was constructed around two works for singer with orchestra.  First, before intermission, was Time Cycle (1960) by Lukas Foss.  A good summary of the work is here, and sound clips from the Bernstein recording are here; Upshaw’s performance sets a higher standard than in this recording.  Then after intermission, there was a performance of Golijov‘s Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra (2002), a beautiful work comprising works written separately and for other uses that have been brought together and reorchestrated as necessary to make a cohesive song cycle.  The central work is “Lua Descolorida” (Colorless Moon), written originally for Upshaw and later incorporated into the Pasion segun San Marcos.  Upshaw has recorded the original version of this song, with piano, and the Pasion has a version with orchestra, for which a clip is available from iTunes, but not from Amazon.  The current cycle surrounds this work with “Night of the Flying Horses”, originally written for a film, and “How Slow the Wind” which combines two Emily Dickinson poems.  In the form we heard yesterday, Golijov has written one of the major works for vocalist and orchestra in the literature. 

The concert opened with Samuel Barber’s Toccata Festiva (1960), for organ and orchestra, written for the new organ in Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, later recorded by Philadelphia, among others.  Simon Preston played the Disney Hall organ, and the work provided lovely fireworks to serve as a compatible introduction to the Foss.  The evening ended with Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story”, which was given a joyous performance.  The members of the orchestra even seemed to enter into the spirit of snapping their fingers and calling out “Mambo!”.  Once again Alexander Mickelthwaite had stepped in for an ailing colleague, and he did well.

Saturday night was the closing concert of this year’s “Jacaranda” series, with a well-shaped program of Berg, Mahler, Schoenberg and Schubert in a tribute to Vienna.  Mark Robson played the Berg piano sonata and accompanied bass-baritone Dean Elzinga in six “Wunderhorn” songs by Mahler.  Gloria Cheng played the Schoenberg Six Little Pieces and performed with the Denali Quartet and Elzinga as narrator in a brilliant performance of Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte.  The Schubert Song of the Spirits Over the Waters for eight men and five low strings served as a closing benediction.  Next season’s Jacaranda series of eight concerts will feature Messiaen.

One of the treats of the Los Angeles Philharmonic programming in recent years has been a series of related concerts on a particular theme of 20th and 21st century music.  The theme might be a composer (Schoenberg, Stravinsky), or it might be a style (minimalism).  This year’s special theme has been “Shadow of Stalin”:  music of the Soviet Union before, during, and after the controls placed on music style and content.  A nice range of programs has been established: five programs by Philharmonic musicians; a symposium; two films; an all-night re-mix with visuals; contemporary underground pops; and a youth orchestra concert.

Last night’s Green Umbrella concert took the sub-theme “Music After the Thaw”.  The first half of the program comprised two works by Sofia Gubaidulina.  The early “Concordanza” (1971), written when she was 40, is a masterful chamber work for four strings, five winds and percussion.  While it is one of the few published works written before she was 50, the sheer control of language and technique expressed in the work (and the sheer volume of work published after she was 60), makes me wonder about all of those unpublished works that had to have lived in her mind before she was able to communicate more openly.  “In Croce” (1979) has several allowed versions:  for cello and button accordian (bayan), for various instruments, and for cello and organ, which was performed last night.  I was blown away.  Most of the recordings seem to be for cello and bayan, but I found one clip for cello and organ, which approximates what I heard in Disney Hall last night.  Ben Hong on cello and Mark Robson on the WDCH organ made this pairing of instruments a beautiful thing to hear.

The last half of the concert was Alfred Schnittke’s “Symphony No. 4” (1984), a 42-minute work in one movement, a work that deserves multiple hearings to begin understanding its patterns.  The work is written for 9 strings (2 vn1, 2vn2, 2va, 2vn, 1cb); 7 winds (f, o, c, b, h, tr, tb); 4 percussionists on pitched percussion; plus celeste, harpsichord, and piano; and vocal quartet (satb) with important solos by tenor and mezzo.  The work has an attractive surface of sounds; it seems quite accessible.  But beneath the surface are slow, repeated, medidative ideas.  These ideas are restrained; they seem to remain private at first meeting.  The vocal line is without words; the original text, a setting of Ave Maria, was removed to avoid censorship of the work.  Certainly this (and other Schnittke works) provide guidance as to the general nature of the meditations in the music, but understanding would come only with familiarity, I think.  I’ll find a version to listen to; it seems to deserve more hearings.

Alexander Mickelthwaite, the Phil’s outgoing Associate Conductor, did his usual fine job in leading the ensemble works that began and ended the program.

A tip of the fedora to Peter Mueller for this handy little link.