(Esa-Pekka Salonen and the LA Phil after last Thursday's concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall.)
THURS, OCT 25 - The LA Phil finished its Sibelius Unbound Festival last week, with a performance of the 5th and 6th symphonies, and The Death of Melisande, a short 6-minute meditation on the ending of the play Peleas and Melisande (this was a substitution for the Sibelius songs that Ben Heppner was supposed to sing, but Heppner had to withdraw due to illness). Thursday's concert was the only concert of the festival that I was able to attend, unfortunately; seeing as how wonderful it was to hear the symphonies conducted with such forcefulness, I wish I had been able to experience the others - but what can you do? The concert was being recorded for iTunes so the audience kept fairly quiet. Though there was the fake-out ending of the 5th Symphony, which ends with a series of big orchestral punctuation marks separated by pauses; the piece sounded over, but a few crashes were still to come before the very, very end.
The orchestra won't be performing another concert locally until Thanksgiving weekend, as they are out on tour to Europe. While I was dinking around on the LA Phil web site this morning, I discovered this tour journal that is documenting the progress of the tour. There are three entries so far, of varying degrees of interest, but hopefully they will keep it updated with more material and photos! Though I wish it functioned more like a regular blog, so I could subscribe to the posts...
This week at Disney Hall: I'm going to both concerts of the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting. I would say go buy tickets, but the two shows appear to be SOLD OUT already...
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