The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Concrete Frequency festival – a multi-disciplinary series of events – offers a probing exploration and celebration of the elements that define a city and how they are affected by, and reflected in, music. The unique examination of the relationship between music and the urban environment includes three orchestral programs, an electronic concert and a singer/songwriter program, enhanced by a film series, an art exhibition and a thought-provoking symposium. The two-week event begins with a Casual Fridays performance featuring Festival Director David Robertson conducting the Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Friday, January 4, at 8 p.m., and wraps up Thursday, January 17, at 9 p.m., with the special event – Man-Machine in the Digital City, featuring Tokyo’s Cornelius and British techno duo Plaid.I attended the event at Walt Disney Concert Hall scheduled for January 11.
When I go to concert events, I pretty much just react to the music. Since I have little knowledge about music making and writing, I presume the technical competence of the performers. Even as a non-musician, it was apparent that the music being played last night was very demanding.
How one reacts to the unusual sounds? That is another story!
DAVID ROBERTSON picked up the microphone and spoke to the audience to kick off the concert. He brought some humor to the proceedings and offered some explanation of the works to be heard. He selected Berio's "Sequenza" to highlight the idea that typical city musicians would play classical by day and supplement their income playing jazz at night so the work fuses both elements. He placed Ives' "Central Park in the Dark" next to give the audience the feeling of that musician walking home through the park.
No question the trumpeter GABRIELE CASSONE was an amazing performer. You can't make those sounds and play with such energy for so long without being at the top of your game. Clearly, some in the audience were trumpet fans as some of them rose up to give him a standing ovation. The rest of the audience offered polite applause.
I think many in the audience, including me, felt unmoved by the composition by Berio. No question, technically demanding but it just didn't catch with me. An interesting feature of the work was the trumpeter sending his sound into the piano strings to generate a resonate sound. Unfortunately, where I was seated that effect was too subtle to really notice.
During Ives' "Central Park in the Dark," the strings provided a low hum and set the atmosphere of the ambient feeling of a warm night in the city. The sound maybe even hinted at the slight buzz of someone feeling tired at the end of a long day and having had an alcoholic drink or two. In the middle of the composition, a collage of sounds intruded from off stage through the speaker system over the sound of the strings. The idea was to create the feeling of various city sounds including street musicians playing in the park. That sound faded away as it would for someone continuing their walk in the park returning to the low buzz of the strings. All in all an intriguing work that accomplished what I think it set out to do emotionally.
Conductor Robertson introduced Feldman's "Turfan Fragments" with the explanation that the composer wanted to offer a musical interpretation of manuscript fragments found on the Silk Road. Indeed, as one watched and listened to the music, various "patches" of the assembled ensemble would play short little snippets of music. This was aurally and visually the most interesting work of the night as one's eyes darted around to see where the music was coming from.
After the intermission, Robertson explained to us that a Palimpsest is a scraped over parchment. Thus, the music would mimic the layers of a palimpsest where the old scratched out writing underneath would be vague and fragmentary while the newer layers would be more full and complete. The first half of the show was dedicated to music with a smaller sound. Palimpsests utilized moments of extreme delicacy with violinists lightly rubbing the strings to others where the full orchestra was blasting away.
The final work of the scheduled program was Zimmermann's "Concerto for trumpet and orchestra (Nobody knows de trouble I see)" with the solo trumpet work of rising young Brit ALISON BALSOM. The work evoked a wide range of emotions and musical styles. To my ears there was a mix of classical, modern, gospel and jazz leaving me with a desire to tap my feet and feeling good.
After a couple of "curtain calls," Robertson took the mike and said, I know encores are rare in contemporary music concerts so since you have been such a wonderful audience, we will play Round Midnight.
This was a jazz piece arranged for orchestra. Robertson and the performers were clearly having fun on this work and the audience who had lingered enjoyed this comparatively light and breezy work after an evening of more difficult contemporary music. As such, we were delighted and responded with applause and cheers upon completion.
Check here for LAT's Mark Swed's expert analysis which I read *after* I wrote this. I always try to write my concert reviews based on my own impressions!
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