LA Phil: Mahler's 3rd

Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa Pekka Salonen, conductor
Mahler: Symphony No. 3
Walt Disney Concert Hall, Sunday, October 1, 2006, 3pm

Mahler's 3rd Symphony is an ideal piece to hear at Disney Hall. It's got huge orchestral sound - big swells alternating with passages of quiet beauty. It shows all the colors of the orchestra along with some big crowd-pleasing bangs.

But here's the clincher with the piece: it lasts an hour and forty minutes. No intermissions. Six movements, of which the first alone is half an hour.

Frankly, though, I didn't really mind. There were so many exciting details in the peice - from new melodies, new variations, interesting sounds - that I was engaged for the entire piece. Not that I didn't feel that hour forty. You certainly do, and the sweat on conductor Esa Pekka Salonen's face after only the first movement shows you that the orchestra is feeling it too. But I was paying attention to the piece the whole time. By contrast, I was bored stiff at a concert of Shostakovich's sixty-minute 11th symphony awhile ago (perhaps my musical ear was not yet trained to hear the complexities of the piece). In any case, I really enjoyed myself here.

And it helped that the final movement is a gorgeous 20 minutes of soaring music that swells with delightful tension into huge orchestral crashes. The music propels you into a euphoric state that can only make you want to stand up and clap at the end.

This was a thrilling opening weekend concert for the LA Phil's 06/07 season. First of all, it's great to have the Phil back at Walt Disney Concert Hall after summer season at the Hollywood Bowl. True, its only been a few months since May, but I was missing my Phil. The Bowl just isn't the same; its fun to picnic there, but the music comes over loud speakers in this weird, blah wall of noise. Might as well put up speakers and play a CD, there's virtually no distinction between whether or not the music is live. But in the concert hall, the music is raw, its alive and it's THERE with you. And it's even more THERE in Disney Hall since the acoustics are so vibrant.

It's so nice to have the main season going at Disney Hall again!

Photo: Curtain call on Sunday at Walt Disney Concert Hall.