Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra: Contemporary Music

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra
Copland: Appalachian Spring
Stravinsky: Suite from Pulcinella
Meyer: Double Bass concerto

Saturday, April 8, 2006
Alex Theatre, Glendale

A mostly pleasing concert of contemporary work from the LA Chamber Orchestra, which is always a great ensemble to hear.

I was attracted to the program by Copland's Appalachian Spring, originally composed for Martha Graham's ballet of the same name. The music usually never fails to send me to heaven, with its airiness and its feeling of complete serenity - all through fantastic bursts of melody and sound. When you hear it with the ballet (which depicts a young couple moving to a new home on the American frontier), it brings a message of eternal hope: that the future lies before you open and optimistic. So, I like this piece a lot. I was however, disappointed by LACO's performanec of it, but not necessarily because it was a bad performance per se. They chose to perform the 13-piece original chamber version, where I'm used to the much larger, percussion augmented orchestral verstion; so to me this performance felt empty and somehow lacking. Oh well.

Pulcinella was a nice treat, with big sound coming from most of the ensemble joining on the stage. Stravinsky is always fun to hear, with its unpredictable rhythms and jaunty atmosphere. This piece seemed to almost recall Mozart or something from the classical period, yet as it progresses, it is clear this piece calls on all contemporary musical tools (the aforementioned rhythms, etc). Fun piece.

Edgar Meyer's Double Bass concerto, which the program noted was its West Coast premiere, was more of a visual spectacle if not an immediately aural one. In addition to the huge double bass being played by Meyer himself at the front of the stage, was an enormous percussion instrument invented specifically for this concerto. The instrument was made up of a bunch of white, variously sized, plastic PVC pipes arranged to look like a giant vibraphone turned on its side. It made the kind of neat noise you get when you're banging empty soda bottles against the counter (and don't tell me you haven't), except these pipes were tuned and hitting different ones created different depths of sound. It's the ultimate dream instrument for an amateur percussionist or a performer from Stomp, except this one was tuned for classical music. The concerto itself ranged from instances that were designed to show off the qualities of the double bass and this new PVC pipe invention, to specific development of musical ideas. Not unlike Meyere's violin concerto (see Hilary Hahn's recording of it for more info). I wouldn't be able to tell you what I remembered musically about the piece, but boy was that PVC pipe thing fun.

This performance was also my first visit to the Alex Theatre in Glendale. I liked it a lot, in terms of ease of getting there and parking (only $1 with validation in a nearby garage, or free on the street if you can find a spot). It's certainly much easier to get to than LACO's other venue, UCLA's Royce Hall. The Alex is acoustically a nice space, but the view from the balcony isn't very great: a thin rail obstructs the front of the stage in the center section. Works OK, I guess, if you're only needing to hear the music, but has the unfortunate side effect of psychologically separating you from the stage. I would think twice about sitting upstairs for a performance where the visuals mattered.

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