Soloist is just obeying Ligeti
Before she began György Ligeti’s Violin Concerto at the Soraya in Northridge on Friday night, soloist Jennifer Koh pounded the music stand with her fist. The stand wasn’t positioned correctly, and Koh got physical.
But Koh got even more physical during her stunning rendition of Ligeti’s 1992 masterpiece with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, led by guest conductor David Danzmayr.
By the time Koh tore her way through Ligeti’s densely textured and polyrhythmic five-movement work, which features an extravagantly complex cadenza in the finale, her violin bow seemed to have little horsehair left. Throughout, she displayed commanding strength and stamina, meeting Ligeti’s indication in the score to play with “crazed virtuosity.”
The concert represented LACO’s first regular orchestral series presentation at the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts. LACO usually performs at the Alex Theatre in Glendale and at UCLA’s Royce Hall. Indeed, the ensemble’s program was repeated Saturday at the Alex and Sunday at Royce.
The Soraya has depended on touring groups, but LACO presents new possibilities. Thor Steingraber, the venue’s executive director, called the concert “a momentous occasion.”
Although lightly attended, the concert proved memorable and at times thrilling. Koh, who made an unforgettable impression performing as the famous physicist in L.A. Opera’s 2013 revival of Philip Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach,” handled the extreme hand and finger positions demanded by Ligeti’s score with authority and rhythmic security.
Ligeti said his five-movement concerto was neither tonal nor atonal. In-tune and out-of-tune passages often work like jazz improvisations. There are no wrong notes, only opportunities to create wonderfully strange sonorities. Woodwind players double on ocarinas, creating odd textures and colors along with Koh’s sometimes ferocious, sometimes touchingly lyrical playing.
The concerto features a solemn chorale and bits of folk song revenants, shattered occasionally by highpitched woodwinds or percussive explosions of orchestral sound.
The Austrian conductor Danzmayr, 38, music director of the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra in Croatia, comes to L.A. with some solid contemporary music credentials, including working with Pierre Boulez. He held Ligeti’s challenging work together, though the performance felt like a high-level run-through, with intensity occasionally giving way to what felt like mere assault. A fine line separates the two in Ligeti, whose sound can get under your skin.
After intermission, Danzmayr and the orchestra gave a leisurely, nicely detailed account of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the “Pastoral.” The bird calls at the close of the second movement, featuring Claire Brazeau’s oboe, Ben Smolen’s flute and Joshua Ranz’s and Nancy Mathison’s clarinets in unison, never fail to enchant. But Beethoven’s fourth movement thunderstorm sounded quaintly pictorial with Ligeti’s emotionally bracing concerto still resonating in the mind.
The curtain-raiser was Danzmayr’s light-footed account of “Straussiana,” Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s 1953 homage to Johann Strauss. It was the great film composer’s last orchestral piece, a lovely and poignant look back on happier times before World War II turned his life upside down.