The plain indisputable fact that Gustavo Dudamel is a tough act to comply with is one thing that has been regarding for the Los Angeles Philharmonic the final two and a half years. Dudamel has however another season as music and creative director earlier than shifting on to the New York Philharmonic, and the seek for a brand new music director stays ongoing, the L.A. Phil clearly rigorously taking the time to get it proper.
Within the meantime, fascinating, predictable and unpredictable, stuff occurs because it has recently on the Hollywood Bowl. Dudamel made the hard-act-to-follow enterprise almost an unimaginable act to comply with through the first of what was presupposed to be his two weeks on the Bowl this month. He needed to cancel his second week, which was to have featured the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, because of new U.S. authorities journey restrictions for the Venezuelan orchestra.
The L.A. Phil stuffed in with two proficient conductors who had been Dudamel fellows and at the moment are having fun with prospering careers, Elim Chan and Gemma New. However there have been additional disappointments. Yuja Wang, who was scheduled to look with Bolívars in Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, canceled, and the world premiere of Arturo Marquez Concerto Trumpet No. 2, which the L.A. Phil commissioned, needed to be postponed.
However maybe the best problem of all was dwelling as much as Dudamel’s astonishing efficiency of Mahler’s First Symphony at his second Bowl live performance. Dudamel has carried out this symphony many instances in L.A., together with at his first live performance in Walt Disney Live performance Corridor because the orchestra’s music director. That youthfully thrilling and at instances wild 2009 efficiency by the 28-year-old Dudamel attracted worldwide consideration and could be revisited on DVD.
On the Bowl this time, Dudamel reached new and shocking interpretive depths. There was a way of being within the second in each element. There was an electrical connection between Dudamel, the orchestra and the massive viewers that expressed its love for Dudamel, chanting “Gustavo! Gustavo!”
The following two evenings on the Bowl, when Dudamel accompanied a screening of “Jurassic Park” with the rating carried out dwell by the L.A. Phil, demonstrated simply how a lot John Williams makes the film. For Dudamel, there isn’t any equal wherever to this mixture of orchestra, viewers, alternatives and venue, and he appeared to very a lot know that in his transient week on the town.
For Chan’s program just a few nights later, she led a colourful, vigorous night of Tchaikovsky (the Violin Concerto with James Ehnes as soloist), Britten (4 Sea Interludes from “Peter Grimes”) and Stravinsky (“Firebird” Suite). For a while, Chan has been rumored to be a candidate within the L.A. Phil’s music director search. She has turn out to be an everyday visitor conductor and opened the Bowl season final summer time. Audiences reply to her verve and so do the gamers. All of that got here throughout on the Bowl. She returns to Disney in January.
Wang’s cancellation, nonetheless, meant one other laborious act to comply with. Two years in the past, the pianist and Dudamel offered a Rachmaninoff competition at Walt Disney Live performance Corridor that resulted in a bestselling and well-deserved award-winning recording of the composer’s 4 piano concertos and “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini.” The set additionally proved direct competitors with the extensively hailed one by the Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov with the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
This week on the Bowl is Rachmaninoff week, with Trifonov performing two concertos (Nos. 2 and three) and British conductor Daniel Harding main the Second Symphony. A 22-year-old Trifonov made his L.A. debut in 2013 on the Bowl in Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto. A dozen years later the Russian pianist who now lives in New York is a star whose enjoying could be in contrast with Rachmaninoff’s personal.
Rachmaninoff performed his Second Concerto on the Hollywood Bowl in 1942. Struggling poor well being, he had moved to Beverly Hills that Could and died the next March. Earlier than the concerto, Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” was carried out as a “prayer for victory,” the U.S. having entered World Conflict II.
Rachmaninoff, who by many accounts (and backed up by his recordings) was one in every of best (some stated the best) pianists of his time, was reported to have been in very good kind on the Bowl. His efficiency of his most well-known and most romantic concerto was stated to embody the seriousness of the instances. 4 years earlier, he had recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Leopold Stokowski. The sound is tough even for its time, however the enjoying comes from inside. You barely discover the extraordinary virtuosity, so pure is the sentiment.
I’ve by no means heard one other pianist match that natural high quality as intently as Trifonov does, and with out ever restraining his personal character. Wang is the spine-tingling reverse, pure electrical energy, pure Yuja Wang, the closest we’ve immediately to Vladimir Horowitz, who occurred to be Rachmaninoff’s Beverly Hills neighbor and favourite pianist.
Two weeks after the composer’s look on the Bowl, Horowitz performed Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto within the amphitheater, and Rachmaninoff famously greeted him afterward backstage by saying that Horowitz performed the killer concerto precisely the best way he wished to listen to it.
The Rachmaninoff recordings of Dudamel and Wang stay preferable however not for the soloists, each of whom are extraordinary and genuine without having to compete. Trifonov is undercut, although, by ostentatious conducting, whereas Dudamel and Wang jibe. For what it’s value, Wang additionally made her Hollywood Bowl debut with a Rachmaninoff concerto (No. 3) and a well-known little orange costume that collectively helped launch her stellar profession.
Tuesday on the Bowl, Harding sensitively supported Trifonov, permitting area for the essence of his enjoying. Slightly Stokowski-like pizzazz that accompanied Rachmaninoff’s recording may not have harm within the lengthy Second Symphony, besides, this was, like Chan’s live performance, a satisfying Bowl night.
These live shows give hope and reaffirm that life goes on. All acts, irrespective of the problem, have to be adopted.
