Review: A mystic in La La Land -- Arvo Pärt's "Los Angeles" Symphony

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s time as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic -- two weeks this month and two in April –- is growing short.  But the theme is the future, and he is packing a lot of the future in.  Saturday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, he premiered a major symphony by Arvo Pärt.  This week will bring more major Philharmonic commissions from Kaija Saariaho and Louis Andriessen.  When Salonen returns in April, he will conduct five world premieres: his Violin Concerto and four chamber works by emerging composers.

Pärt has taken his commission seriously.  The Estonian composer, who is a cult figure revered for the mystical aura of his meditative music, gives the impression of being a man not of this world.

As a young composer he wrote, between 1964 and 1971, three symphonies that chronicled his struggle with the musical language of his day and his rebellion against the folksy Soviet style.  After a flirtation with 12-tone composition, which he often used in angry confrontation with earlier musical styles, he came upon his own brand of ringing Minimalism, which he called tintinnabulation and which he felt expressed his veneration of nature and his Orthodox Christian bent.

Pärt's orchestral and instrumental pieces since the Third Symphony have tended to be short and otherworldly, although he has written much longer sacred choral scores, many of haunting beauty, in which a single note can mean much.  He displays the full beard and shy, quiet demeanor of a monk not much involved with the quotidian.  He is said to surround himself, in the Estonian countryside, with silence.  His visits to the United States have been few.

But now, 38 years after the Third Symphony, Pärt has written a Fourth, labeled it “Los Angeles” and dedicated it to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian oil executive with political ambitions who was accused of fraud and now languishes in a Siberian prison.  Pärt explained in a program insert that he is also reaching out in this symphony to “all those imprisoned without rights in Russia.” For the composer, the symphony is meant as “carrier pigeon” he hopes might “reach faraway Siberia one day.”

If not, at least the pigeon will have a nourished soul, because the symphony is large -- at 37 minutes considerably longer than the earlier ones -- and exceedingly beautiful. I found a carrier pigeon of my own to send a question backstage to Pärt after the performance about the meaning of the dedication.  The composer called Khodorkovsky a great man and said Russia would be a better country had the oligarch, once Russia’s wealthiest man, become its leader.

The “Los Angeles” Symphony is for strings, harp and percussion, and it opens in what sounds like a better world, perhaps that realm to which Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde ascend.  The violins begin with a sustained soft chord in the stratosphere, accompanied by isolated plucks from harp and cellos.  The score, which its publisher, Universal Editions, has posted online for free (a first for an important new work by a world-famous composer), remains sparse through its three movements.  It moves at a snail’s pace.

The percussion is either the tolling of deep timpani or the ring of high bells.  There are deliberate march-like passages with simple harmonies.  Chords, though, tend to smudge into each other rather than resolve.  String textures are thin; nothing in this symphony is hidden.  Single sounds become windows looking out to the world.

Nothing when Pärt’s music is performed can be out of place, and nothing here was.  The strings were exquisite, and Disney Hall’s acoustics might well have been designed with Pärt’s music in mind (coincidentally, the composer’s work will also be featured in an upcoming Los Angeles Master Chorale program and an organ recital in Disney).  The symphony, on every level, was an event.

Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1, which was played after intermission, is far too common to be an event.  Yet the performance, in which Emanuel Ax was the soloist, was one nonetheless.  Salonen is hardly known as a Brahmsian, but he could be if he wanted to, at least on the evidence of the intensity Saturday.

Ax is very well known as a Brahmsian but not as the kind he was on this occasion.  Rather than relying on his usual gracious pianism, he was a power player, he and the orchestra excitingly lobbing passages back and forth.  The pianist was hardly immune to the beauty of lyric passages, and the slow movement was gorgeous, but it was his capturing the drama of every moment that made this performance magnificent.

The concert began with Mozart’s overture to his little entertainment “The Impresario.”  Salonen gave it richness and life, evidently intending that not a moment of his remaining few with this orchestra should be wasted. 

-- Mark Swed

Photo: Arvo Pärt, left, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Credit: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Arnie]

Bollocks. 30+ minutes of agonizing, tedious fake-religious drivel. Once again Swed shows he's on the payroll. Not of the Times but of the Phil.

[geoff tuck]

wow. vitriol. the music was beautiful, thrilling, sad. i don't care who pays mark swed so long as he keeps writing!

[Multinesia]

Nonsense, Arnie! Pärt's Los Angeles was delicate, ethereal and sublime. I, for one, will be downloading the iTunes version.

[Sirje Helder Gold]

It was an evening of extra ordinary performances and Pärt's symphony was most beautiful. Happy to have been there.

[Arnie]

I keep forgetting what passes for spirituality in LA. Not a very high bar there. In retrospect I shouldn't be surprised that minimalist glurge dedicated to a Russian oil baron would pass muster here.

Geoff: It does matter who pays Swed. The Times took it in the shorts a few years ago when the relationship with the Staples people was too close for comfort. Of course that was then when such separation mattered. When a critic loses his job, the immediate response is to wring hands about the loss of coverage, context, discourse, mayonnaise, and whatnot. (See the tempest in a teacup over the LA Weekly guy). Swed gushes over Salonen and the Phil at every opportunity. Neither good nor kosher.

[uvnla]

What kind of a moronic headline is that? Where is this cliched "La-la Land"? I don't know of such an actual place, just the hoary fabrication of self-designed east coast provincials. Disgraceful that you should use such an idiotic and inaccurate phrase.

[Elena]

I was there and was very moved by Part's delicate, tender piece. Arnie sounds well-educated (all good), but perhaps he's too smart to allow himself to relax into such beauty. Whatever the politics surrounding Swed, etc., I found the Part piece wonderful.

[Arnie]

You can plumb its shallows at Universal Music, where they've put up the score for free (and worth every penny).

http://issuu.com/universaledition/docs/paert4thsymph

I do admit the subtle quotation of the Orthodox hymn, "Tu stultus es" in the second movement is nice.

[Peter]

I'll be hearing it this weekend in Chicago, where the CSO will perform it, directed by Salonen. Can't wait!

[Bob]

Arnie is entitled to his opinion, but is an idiot.

I'm not from Los Angeles. I wept through the entire piece.

[Arnie]

Glad we can respectfully disagree, Bob. Here, have some chicken soup for your sensitive soul.

[Kevin]

Apparently Arnie is the High Priest of deciphering all that is spiritual or not...man I wish I had that ability! Arnie, please tell us if there is some special water you've been drinking and if you could guide us, O Spiritual Master, to the music of the Heavens...please o please I need your help!!

[Arnie]

Nah. Just shaking my head at all the rapturous gushing from Swed and the Part fans in the comments. But, what do you expect from a city that gave the world L.Ron Hubbard, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Dr.Gene Scott?

[Max Smith]

Persecution of Khodorkovsky is a well-calculated part of a larger political process. After failed 1991 coup, the KBG lost their control over the USSR and for the first time since the 1917 revolution it became possible to develop and run large businesses in Russia. A number of young entrepreneurs, many in their 20s, used that opportunity to transform their businesses in major financial groups. They became rich, powerful “oligarchs”, who employed top KGB brass.

Needless to say, the KGB could not tolerate a situation when they were subordinated to new young masters of Russia and staged its comeback to power by methodically destroying oligarchs. Alex Konanykhin, at the time the youngest and the most influential oligarch, who by age of 25 controlled Russia’s largest bank, was the first to fall a victim of the KGB comeback. In his book Defiance (www.DefianceTheBook.com), he described how he was kidnapped by the KGB in 1992, escaped, and had been targeted by the assassins and KGB successor agencies for 12 years thereafter, until receiving political asylum in the USA.

The new trial over Khodorkovsky is simply a reminder of who the boss is in Russia, just like brazen poisoning of Litvinenko in London by plutonium-210 was a convincing demonstration that the KGB can and will destroy their enemies regardless of where they might seek their refuge.

[Prof Dr Hugo de Garis]

Who is this new genius?

I first came across Part's music in the 90s when I was living in Japan, watching a video documentary movie about the decision to drop the Hiroshima bomb. As Enola Gay was landing, Parts haunting, heart piercing music ("Cantus") started. I was glued. Who is this new genius I remember thinking, and played that part of the video over and over. I felt I had listened to a 20th century Beethoven or Brahms. I found his music as emotionally gripping and painful (in the best sense of the word) as Mahler at his best.

A few days ago, I came across Part's new (2008) 4th symphony (on youtube), dedicated to Los Angeles. This is the first symphony he has written in nearly 40 years, and it shows. It is deep, mature (Part is now in his 70s), emotionally and intellectually rich and again, I listened to it over and over, trying to understand its newness, until I felt I understood it, felt familiar with it, learned to truly love it. One of the great attractions of great art, is that it makes anything else seem inessential, except (in my case at least) the profundities and power of pure mathematics.

Cheers, Prof Dr Hugo de Garis,
profhugodegaris@yahoo.com, China. November 2010.