Music review: A tribute to Ernest Fleischmann to remember at Walt Disney Concert Hall

Cities do not put up monuments for arts administrators, Los Angeles Philharmonic President Deborah Borda noted Tuesday afternoon in her remarks before the unveiling of a monument to an arts administrator. The clouds broke. The hot sun blazed. Brass players blared a fanfare. With perfect timing, a tour bus drove by, offering waves and cheers.

Musical luminaries from around the world –- Pierre Boulez (in very cool mirrored aviator sunglasses), Esa-Pekka Salonen, James Conlon, John Williams, John Mauceri, many others -– sat on folding chairs in front of Walt Disney Concert Hall for the ceremony naming the corner of 1st Street and Grand Avenue  Ernest Fleischmann Square.

No one may have thought to provide umbrellas for shade as the sun reflected off the Disney steel. But  inside the hall that evening there was a special Green Umbrella concert, "A Tribute to Ernest." True to the man it honored, it was a night to remember.

Fleischmann, who was managing director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1969 to 1998, died in June at 85. He gave us Disney Hall. He gave us generations of great conductors whom he mentored and monitored. He broke boundaries between old and new, popular and classical, music and other arts, music and education, music and food and, maybe most important of all, music and civic life.

Among Fleischmann’s many innovations was founding the L.A. Philharmonic’s New Music Group in 1981, now widely copied by other orchestras, and its Green Umbrella series, which he named for some cockamamie reason no one could talk him out of. He stuck by an unpopular idea, these new music concerts, funded them from his own pocket when necessary (and inspired Salonen and Borda to do the same) and now they are an envied success everywhere.

Tuesday’s Green Umbrella Concert, with free tickets for those lucky enough to jump the day they became available, featured three generations of conductors close to Fleischmann. Boulez conducted his 1998 masterpiece “Sur Incises” four days after his 86th birthday. Salonen, whom Fleischmann hired as the L.A. Philharmonic music director in 1992, chose Stravinsky’s “Renard.” Lionel Bringuier, the orchestra’s associate conductor whom Fleischmann discovered, selected Franco Donatoni’s “Arpège.” The Los Angeles Children’s Choir gave the U.S. premiere of Salonen’s “Dona Nobis Pacem.”

Notably missing from this lineup was Gustavo Dudamel, another Fleischmann discovery. But the orchestra’s latest music director made a surprise last-minute appearance in the hall, and in brief remarks to the audience before the concert explained that he couldn’t conduct because this was the day his first baby was due. He also said that he was the only one who didn't have to turn his cellphone off.

After retiring from the L.A. Philharmonic, Fleischmann spent several seasons as artistic director of the Ojai Music Festival. For his last, in 2003, he invited Boulez to be music director and “Sur Incises” was performed. The same three harpists, three pianists and three percussionists reassembled to open Tuesday’s program. Unlike probably every other conductor in history, Boulez has been speeding up as he ages. This “Sur Incises” lasted just under 38 minutes, two minutes faster than the Ojai performance eight years ago.

“Sur Incises” is a vast expansion in dazzling sonorities of a small piano piece, “Incises.” Although as intricate as everything else he has written, it reveals a new freedom and playfulness. Boulez magnified each tiny percussive slap or trill in the original "Incises" into a vast musical concourse and discourse. He set one thing vibrating, then another, then another, and pretty soon the whole room shimmered.

“Dona Nobis Pacem,” for children, had its premiere in Paris last month and is based on a solo cello piece that Salonen wrote in memory of Fleischmann. A melody turns on itself, in a folk-like manner that shows Salonen’s current obsession with Bartók and Eastern European music. Children everywhere will want to learn this. And they will have to be very great to sound more merrily angelic than the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus did under Anne Tomlinson Tuesday.

The Donatoni connection was that the Italian composer was Salonen’s teacher. Colorfully performed by Bringuier and six members of the New Music Group, “Arpège,” from 1986, was a study in fascinatingly opaque turns of phrase. Salonen may have adopted some of his teacher's turns but not the opaqueness.

Before conducting “Renard,” Salonen explained why he had chosen it to end the concert. Recounting a hilarious story of a harrowing trip with Fleischmann at the wheel of a rented BMW in Germany and Austria, Salonen said that Stravinsky’s ever-changing meters reminded him of Fleischmann’s terrible driving. The second reason was because Fleischmann loved the piece. The third, Salonen said: “Because I loved him.”

“Renard,” a burlesque in song with an absurdist Russian text for two tenors (Daniel Chaney and Grant Gershon), baritone (Abdiel González) and bass (Reid Bruton) and chamber ensemble, is a kind of companion piece to Stravinsky’s much better-known “Les Noces.” Salonen, who recorded “Renard” in London in 1990, made the Russian folk character, the acid sonorities, the fractured road-map rhythms vivid in Disney.

The old CD still stands up. But 21 years later, Salonen’s Stravinsky stands out. This “Renard” was electrifying.

Broadcast live by KUSC, “A Tribute to Ernest” will remain available for streaming for a week. But Ernest was big enough to deserve two monuments. The station should keep it online permanently.

RELATED

An appreciation: Ernest Fleischmann

Obituary: L.A. Philharmonic's determined visionary

Esa-Pekka Salonen remembers an inimitable Ernest Fleischmann

-- Mark Swed

Photos: Top, Pierre Boulez conducts "Sur Incises" at Walt Disney Concert Hall Tuesday night. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times. Below, Esa-Pekka Salonen uses his cellphone to photograph the plaque at 1st and Grand naming the intersection Ernest Fleischmann Square. Credit: Mark Swed / Los Angeles Times.

Comments

[Susan Allen]

Wonderful to perform with Pierre again after 8 years since we were in Ojai...the Green Umbrella concert series was something that Frans van Rossum, the then Dean of CalArts' School of Music, and Ernest came up with in the late 80s. It was an attempted marriage of the LA Phil New Music Group and the CalArts New Century Players. 7 of the 9 players in Sur Incises last night were from that CalArts affiliation.

[glenn grab]

Boulez is a living legend......but, don't tell me that "Sur Incises" is a masterpiece....I know a lot more than the average guy does about music...I'm a cellist, I made a decent living playing the cello in LA for more than forty years..I'm quite well educated, some might even say intelligent....OK, here goes...This type of atonal, unintelligible, system written(12 tone, I think) "music" is a hoax, you can't tell me that anyone, even the fine performers who played this piece, would ever listen to this stuff voluntarily, it all sounds the same, why do you think the Boulez was played before the wonderful Stravinsky "Renard"?...because if they played it last, no-one would stick around to hear it. That piece was the longest thirty-eight minutes of my life. I defy anyone to hum a theme or tune that they remember from the performance...it's time people stopped putting up with this assault on their senses and intelligence that is being perpetuated by this type of so-called "modern" music...here's an anecdote about the concert...after the Boulez piece there was an intermission...I went to the bathroom, while washing my hands, I commented to a fellow concert-goer "after this piece, the Stravinsky's going to sound like Mozart"...he looked at me rather quizzically and said "I guess I'm just not smart enough to understand this modern stuff"...I reassured him that the fault didn't lie with him, but with the composer...therein lies the problem...the public has been told that if they don't like this "stuff" they're ignorant, and because of this they're afraid to speak up...they can only voice their opinion by not coming to concerts any more...is this what we want as musicians and performers?...I think not!!

[francis]

@) Glenn: You are so right! I have never like Boulez's compositions (although, I do admire him as a conductor), but, if I say that in certain circles, I'm looked @ like I just admitted to being married to my sister. On the other hand, I thought Salonen's choral piece for children was lovely. I do admit, though, I find the majority of Salonen's work to be pretentious drivel. So often, he seems to be saying; "Look, look, aren't I clever?" Again, that's not something I can express out loud around the Music Center for fear of instant knee-jerk condemnation! There is quite a bit of so-called "new music" I like, but the vast majority of it I can do without.

[Amy Knoles]

It was an honor to be asked to perform "Sur Incise" again by Pierre Boulez himself! The beautiful melodies and rhythmic themes are still with me coming back in moments of calm. I smile when they return, feeling as if an old friend has tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear. To experience the music in Disney Hall was one of the most amazing and inspiring experiences of my life.

[Susan Allen]

Sur Incises IS a masterpiece by one of the greatest living composers.......

[Henry Holland]

"you can't tell me that anyone, even the fine performers who played this piece, would ever listen to this stuff voluntarily"

I do, so do two of my friends. Number of CD with Boulez' music I own: 37
Number of CD's of *anything* by Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Brahms: 2

"it all sounds the same"

And the endless amount of crap by Vivaldi, Telemann, Haydn, Handel and that Renaissance Fair nonsense that KUSC shove down my throat in between playing good music DOESN'T? Hahahahahahahahahaha.

"I defy anyone to hum a theme or tune that they remember from the performance"

I can, and there's more to music than freakin' tunes! What a dire, reductive view of what music can be.

"I reassured him that the fault didn't lie with him, but with the composer"

No, is IS his failure, and YOURS, Boulez' music communicates with me and others perfectly fine.

"they can only voice their opinion by not coming to concerts any more"

Oh for god's sake! It was ONE concert, that had maybe 45 minutes of "difficult" music, it's not like there's not a freakin' Brahms Festival coming up or concerts of all-19th century stuff that that gentleman could go to! I'm sick of people like you acting like a repressed minority, who act like they're Alex in "A Clockwork Orange" strapped down and forced to listen, having all that icky modern music foisted on them, when it's played so little and often in the New Music ghetto (i.e. avoidable). It's a lie and time for people like you to be called on it.

Thank you for your performance, Ms. Knoles, I never thought I'd get a chance to hear it live! If only he'd come back here and do "Repons"........

[glenn grab]

I would rather hear Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs play "Woolly-Bully" 20 times in a row than listen to this 12 tone travesty(nice alliteration, eh?) again!!I'm sorry if I offended any of you cultured "artistes", all of you are fine musicians, but you have a financial stake in music, you were well-paid, and justifiably so, for your services...another thing, Henry Holland, the house was "papered", most of the audience received free tickets, as did I....I'll tell you what, Henry....why don't you post, on YouTube, a video of yourself singing the themes from this piece?... I'd be interested in hearing it..as far as masterpieces go, Wednesday, two days ago, I played with the Desert Symphony(an orchestra composed of professional musicians, mostly from LA).....John Novacek, the terrific pianist, performed Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Variations on I've Got Rhythm"...those are 20th century masterpieces....

[Henry Holland]

"I would rather hear Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs play "Woolly-Bully" 20 times in a row than listen to this 12 tone travesty"

Who cares what you'd rather listen to?

"(nice alliteration, eh?)"

It was, BACK IN 1945. Jeebus, could you people get some new material, you're staler than an old Rodney Dangerfield routine.

"another thing, Henry Holland, the house was "papered", most of the audience received free tickets, as did I"

The *whole house* was papered, the concert was free from the get go, it was advertised as such. I only was able to get a ticket at the return window the night of the concert because they'd all been taken. But hey, don't let FACTS get in the way of your uninformed ramblings.

"I'll tell you what, Henry....why don't you post, on YouTube, a video of yourself singing the themes from this piece?"

I don't have a video camera or a camera-phone or any way to record video. I'll give you my address, you can send me $1,000 so I can buy a video camera and I promise to post a video on YouTube. No really, I will! It might be iffy though, I'm not able to sing 10-note chords.

"I'm sorry if I offended any of you cultured "artistes" "

No you're not, or you wouldn't have spelled it with an e and in "quote" marks. Reverse snobbery is soooooo boring.

Let's play Unintentional Hilarity for $1,000, Alex:

"all of you are fine musicians, but you have a financial stake in music, you were well-paid, and justifiably so, for your services..."

Right, so they're bought and sold and their opinions are of no worth because of that but we should take your opinion seriously why?

"I played with the Desert Symphony(an orchestra composed of professional musicians, mostly from LA).....John Novacek, the terrific pianist, performed Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Variations on I've Got Rhythm" "

Ah, so when *they* play for money, we can discount their opinion, but when you do it, even if it's just union scale, it's ART, dammit, ART I TELL YOU! Do tell, if you played the Michael Jackson concert that the Desert Pops Orchestra, erm, I mean Desert Symphony did last month, how did it feel to take money for playing the music of a known pedophile? If you didn't, how did it feel to be part of an organization that recently played the music of a known pedophile?

" "Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Variations on I've Got Rhythm"...those are 20th century masterpieces...." "

And that has what to do with Pierre Boulez' music? Good lord.

As Morrissey once sang "It's pe0ple like you/that make me feel so old inside". People like you have the choice of staying in the bar of the restaurant downstairs from the Dot until the piece you like comes up, but NO, you go and then bitch afterwards about how horrible it was and make the absurd claim that no one likes "that" kind of music, when it's obvious that people do. As long as I live, I'll never get the bitter resentment that people like you exhibit that music like "sur incises" even exists.

[glenn grab]

well, Henry, all I asked is for you to sing one tune from the Boulez piece, you can do that on any computer, I'm sure one of the two twelve-tone friends you have could supply that for you. I'm sorry if my remarks caused a hissy-fit on your part, but maybe listening to some Boulez or Babbit or late Schoenberg will calm you down...by the way, thanks for proving my points with your weak ranting retorts....your vitriol tells me you still have some lingering psychological issues, perhaps you were bullied or molested as a child....try anger management classes, I've heard they can do wonders with persons of your ilk!!...my mission is over....