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Music Review: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra At The Alex

Jason Issokson |
April 19, 2011 | 6:02 a.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

Music director Jeffrey Kahane conducts the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (Photo by Ken Hively)
Music director Jeffrey Kahane conducts the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (Photo by Ken Hively)
On the heels of some pretty distressing news in the classical music world — namely, that the venerable institution of American symphonic excellence, the Philadelphia Orchestra, is now in the process of filing for bankruptcy protection — last night’s unmistakably joyful program of Harbison, Dvorak and Beethoven at the Alex Theatre in Glendale came as something of a much-needed diversion. In fact, you would have been hard-pressed to find a more cheerful or ebullient program of symphonic music in Southern California this entire season.

The smiles began immediately, with a work commissioned by LACO in 1993: Gli Accordi Piu Usati (The Most Often Used Chords) by American composer John Harbison. The composition is, in all truth, a joke — a marvelously tidy musical joke that is at once boisterous, charming and expeditiously structured. 

The inspiration came to Harbison after purchasing a few compositional notebooks for his musical sketches during a trip to Italy; one of them came with a reference chart for the “most often used chords.” Harbison, whose wit is considerably more adventurous than his tonal language, took the chart entirely out of context, using it not as a reference, but as the basis for a new composition altogether.    

Harbison is reliably clever. Musical winks and nods abound — discourteous toots of the bassoon in its lower reaches are made purposefully droll. The polite ding of a triangle marks an ending, where a grand frisson of excitement would usually be found.

But the strength of this piece is not so much Harbison’s witty musical ideas as it is his willingness to let go of those ideas once they’ve been exhausted. Each movement comes in a digestible portion — musical hors d'oeuvres rather than a main course (it’s just the evening’s appetizer, after all).

The opening movement is a snazzy treatment of deliberately simple melodic materials. Strings fire out scales in major and minor as though the players are limbering up their fingers for the evening’s concert, while winds and percussion punctuate their warm-ups with insistent Stravinskyan interjections. Harbison is at his best when his music is energetic and percussive, and this is Harbison at his best: brusque but not importunate — and unmistakably concise.

With movement names like Toccata, Variazioni and Ciaccona, if the program led some to believe that Gli Accordi would be some sort of pastiche Neo-Baroque throwback, they weren’t the only ones fooled. Harbison’s titles aren’t really titles at all. They are playthings, conditions in which he forces himself to work.

So, the Variazioni movement is as much a leisurely undulating meditation on a single musical thought as it is a legitimate set of variations. And what Harbison calls a Ciaccona (where a developing melodic voice is set over a repeated harmonic progression) would scarcely be recognized as such by the Baroque masters who championed the form — though Harbison technically fulfills the conditions by setting a restless, at times violent, melody against the backdrop of those “ten most often used chords.”

Harbison’s tonal language is inoffensive, perhaps, but certainly never cloying. In the finale he releases his dissonances in volleys — torrents of notes come in fits and starts, and the silences are often just as surprising as the noise. 

But it’s all in the delivery, as they say. So if Harbison’s musical comedy fell a little flat on Saturday night, it was through no fault of his material; LACO just didn’t nail the punch line. Entrances were haphazard and intonation was too often found wanting. Maestro Jeffrey Kahane appeared hesitant and tempos often felt languid. One can hope that a more sure-footed performance will happen on Sunday.

Kahane and his band were noticeably more comfortable with the old-world charm of the Op. 22 Serenade for Strings by Antonin Dvořák. Of all the music written for string orchestra Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings is surpassed in popularity only, perhaps, by Tchaikovsky’s C Major Serenade for Strings and that drippy, ridiculously over-programmed anthem of tragedy, the Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber. And of all the music written for string orchestra, there is really nothing quite as elegant as the Dvořák Serenade.

It’s easy to lose oneself in the sublimity of the inner movements: The Tempo di Valse is bittersweet in three — sentimental but never slushy — and the Scherzo is the musical embodiment of mirth. The Larghetto is just plain beautiful.

For all its refinement and poise, this isn’t easy music to execute. In fact, whenever a piece is scored for strings alone, watch out. Without the camouflage of winds and brass, ensemble issues make themselves known, and pitch impurities become conspicuously obvious. LACO’s string players did a nice job of avoiding the worst of these missteps, pulling off a lush, confident reading of some supremely difficult music. And Kahane made sure they enjoyed it, lingering in the sweet parts, stretching out the tense parts and dancing in the dance parts.

But the evening’s best music-making came from the woefully underappreciated Canadian pianist Jon Kimura Parker, whose performance of Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto, known as the “Emperor Concerto,” was an utter delight.

His is not a fussy Beethoven. Parker launched into the three mini-cadenzas that marks the opening of the work with an unapologetic sweep rather than the typical pianistic pedantry. Though he often plays big, Parker certainly doesn’t pound. So the loud stuff was loud, yes. But it was also rich and resonant — rounded not blunt.

Parker is not much to watch — his stage presence lacks the flare of his more ostentatious colleagues. But make no mistake; Parker is as exciting to the ears as he is boring for the eyes (this critic happens to think that is a good thing).

With the exception of an innocent memory issue near the end of the first movement, Parker’s playing was consistently exceptional. The sensitive music was some of his best — the gorgeous slow movement held together like a single, extended musical thought. And Maestro Kahane — himself an accomplished concert pianist — provided excellent, responsive support.

Parker offered up the last movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata Piano Sonata as an encore. Though he pulled it off brilliantly, one couldn’t help but regret leaving the hall on a tempestuous note after such a cheerful program. But with half the audience already on their way out, Kahane joined Parker for a second helping of dessert: George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm,” arranged for piano four hands.

Who could ask for anything more?

Reach staff reporter Jason Issokson here.



 

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