L.A. Phil soars with a cello spectacular
Before returning to Walt Disney Concert Hall on Friday night, Los Angeles Philharmonic principal guest conductor Susanna Mälkki had a date with the New York Philharmonic. Lucky L.A., was the critical consensus in the Big Apple.
In New York and elsewhere, Mälkki has been admired for refreshing standard repertory with vivid instrumental colors, rhythmic energy, textural clarity and all-around good sense. But what makes Mälkki special happens to be her imagination and risk taking. She champions challenging European modernism that is little wanted in cautious American concert halls. She also likes bringing in theatrical elements.
She thinks daringly big with risky and expensive undertakings that may not always be easy to sell, but they are exactly what makes Mälkki so attractive to the L.A. Phil.
On Friday, Mälkki programmed the U.S. premiere of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Cello Concerto, a difficult score that requires exotic instruments, boasts a killer solo and takes the form of a highly abstract pas de trois, with the option (rarely selected) of an actual pas de trois with three dancers.
The L.A. Phil hired choreographer Tero Saarinen to create a half-hour dance with his Finnish company for three Disney performances. Mälkki surrounded the concerto with Anton Webern’s brilliant orchestration of a Bach fugue and Richard Strauss’ colossal “An Alpine Symphony.”
The evening’s soloist was to have been popular L.A. Phil principal cellist Robert deMaine, who on Tuesday withdrew for undisclosed personal reasons. There are said to be only three cellists, all in Europe, who have played Zimmermann’s demanding concerto.
Management turned to three locals with exceptional new music chops — L.A. Phil associate cellist Ben Hong, Calder Quartet’s Eric Byers and Lyris Quartet’s Timothy Loo — to divide the solo part. They got their scores early Wednesday. Rehearsals were Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.
Only knowing Zimmermann’s concerto from recordings, I can’t say that the cellists were able to achieve the last word in interpretive nuance. But I can say that not only were all three utterly convincing, the addition of a third pas-de-trois element to the performance turned out to be a terrific theatrical idea. Moreover, the camaraderie among the players, the orchestra, the dancers and Mälkki was unexpectedly endearing, an aspect that is otherwise disturbingly lacking in Zimmermann’s music.
He was a powerful voice in post-World War II German music who saw the world as a dark and tragic place. Ultimately Zimmerman took his own life in 1970. To some observers, the works of his last four years, beginning with the Cello Concerto, can be read as a systematic suicide note putting the blame on the success of such younger, dogmatic composers as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, who were getting all the attention.
But nearly half a century since Zimmermann’s death, his champions now proclaim him as a proto-Postmodernist who broke barriers of style and era.
The Cello Concerto opens dreamlike, with a muted orchestra, otherworldly solo cello and instruments (cimbalom, mandolin, electric bass) with a mind of their own. That is followed by an Allegro indicated, without explanation, to be for a fairy, Don Quixote and a princess. Hong, as soloist here, delivered his customary eloquence.
A central slow movement revolves around a cello solo that was rapturously played by Byers. Loo excitingly led a frightful march and played a cantankerous blues with the electric bass followed by a coda in which the fairy is supposed to take her leave.
The orchestra was in a triangular formation, bordered by rows of neon pillars. That left two areas on the front of the stage and a platform behind the orchestra for the dancers.
Saarinen’s movements often followed the musical lines, creating a feeling more wistful than nightmarish. Just as Zimmermann’s relationships between instrumental groups remain unpredictably f luid, so too were the dancers — Auri Ahola, Misa Lommi and David Scarantino — as they wavered between sociability and individuality.
What proved most affecting was the sheer gumption of an orchestra that was at its flexible best.
Mälkki made a great case for color. The excerpt from “The Musical Offering,” with the continual alteration of timbre from one instrument to another, took on a new 20th century character.
Strauss’ “Alpine Symphony” was a riot of color for an orchestra as big and brilliantly hued as it gets. Mälkki climbed the peak like a brazen adventurer who was also a harmonic geologist capable of examining inner workings. She let the sun shine and the climactic vistas speak for themselves.
No sentimentalist, she cleared away the mystical pathos the score has acquired over the years. Mälkki did have to give what Strauss labeled as “The Dangerous Moments” a near Zimmermann level of disquiet, however temporary. It was a spectacular performance.