Music review: Simon Rattle and Berlin Philharmonic winning again at Disney Hall

The Berlin Brahms Bombers victory tour came to a premature finish Tuesday night. The leader of the Berlin Philharmonic, Simon Rattle, received a hero’s excited welcome. The Second Symphony proved smashing, as had the first night from this inimitable orchestra’s two-evening visit to Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Pity, then, that the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which sponsored the concerts and which was welcoming back a prodigal son who was once its principal guest conductor, had not gone all the way and added a third concert. Not only did Berlin bring the four Brahms symphonies on its U.S. tour, but also two Schoenberg works that were not included in the L.A. concerts.

That, however, didn’t stop Rattle from the remarkable achievement of making news with Brahms' Second. He also made news with Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony, on the first half of the program, and that was an even bigger accomplishment.

Music review: Simon Rattle and Berlin Philharmonic triumphant at Disney Hall

It is not easy to create a sensation with the Brahms symphonies. These four sturdy scores are the standard repertory’s comfort food, often served overcooked and under-spiced, meant more to nourish than excite.

Monday night the Berlin Philharmonic played Brahms’ First in Walt Disney Concert Hall. Simon Rattle conducted. As always, the symphony ended in its conventionally feel-good rush to glory on a C-major chord. But this time the crowd began to cheer just as the sound was evaporating, turning Brahms’ chord into a swelling tone cluster as cheers expanded into an exhilarating roar. The performance had been so alive that it seemed the audience needed to extend the symphony long enough to physically absorb Brahms and take him home with them.

The ups and downs of Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic have been avidly followed by the music world. In 2002, the popular British conductor became the orchestra’s chief conductor and artistic director, the most prestigious post in conducting, after having spent 18 years with the provincial City of Birmingham Symphony, which he turned into perhaps England’s most noticed orchestra. Angelenos watched Rattle grow from whiz-kid to master during his 14-year stint as principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which ended in 1994.

But no conductor is prepared for the Berlin fishbowl. Time has been needed for Rattle to adjust to the limelight and for a storied institution with a glorious, if not always sterling, past to adjust. The Berlin Philharmonic that last appeared at Disney with Rattle six years ago is not the same one here Monday and Tuesday nights.

Monster Mash: Google partners with Iraq's National Museum; Pompidou strike; nude model exonerated

-- Everything old is new again: Google plans to make thousands of images of ancient artifacts from Iraq's National Museum accessible online. (Reuters)

-- To the barricades: Employees at the Centre Pompidou in Paris go on strike to protest job cuts. (Agence France Presse)

-- Embezzlement?: The London Philharmonic Orchestra's finance director faces the allegation that he stole about $926,000 over a four-year period. (Evening Standard)

-- Officially kaput: The troubled stage production of "A Christmas Carol" that originated in Hollywood last year has canceled all of its planned performances for the season. (Chicago Tribune)

-- Baring it all, Part 1: The model who was arrested earlier this year for posing nude at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is off the hook after prosecutors drop the case. (New York Post)

-- Baring it all, Part 2: Actress Kim Cattrall will pose nude in an effort to save a painting by Titian on display in the U.K. (Zap2It)

-- Recovered: The discovery of Andy Warhol's lost "Heinz 57" crate leads to an arrest in New York. (Bloomberg)

-- No kidding: Artists are taking a beating in the current economic downturn, according to a new study. (Art Info)

-- And in the L.A. Times: The tagger/artist known as REVOK has been arrested; an L.A. photographer documents the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy; Marc Shaiman is set to return as music director for the Academy Awards ceremony.

-- David Ng

Photo: Google chief executive Eric Schmidt tours the National Museum in Baghdad as part of an announcement that the company will be digitizing artifacts from the museum. Credit: Sabah Arar / AFP / Getty Images

Berlin Philharmonic by way of the World Wide Web

Want to see the Berlin Philharmonic this week at Disney Hall, but finding the tickets limited and pricey? Wish that Hulu could stream Rachmaninoff along with “30 Rock”? In either case, the Berliners, who appear tonight and Tuesday at Walt Disney Concert Hall, have the solution at what they call their Digital Concert Hall.

The 127-year-old band is no stranger to technological advances -- in 1980, the Berlin Philharmonic (under the baton of Herbert von Karajan) recorded the first classical CD.

Introduced earlier this year, the Digital Concert Hall was the brainchild of Olaf Maninger, a principal cellist and member of the orchestra’s Media Board. Wanting to reach a new audience and improve the Philharmonic’s profile online, Maninger worked to get the support of Deutsche Bank to install cameras in the Philharmonie, the orchestra's home concert hall, and support the webcasts.

Entry into the Digital Concert Hall isn’t free: A single performance goes for 9.90 Euros ($15), up to a “Season Pass,” a whole year of all-you-can listen to concerts for 149 Euros ($223).  Besides simulcasts, healthy selections of the orchestra’s concerts since August 2008 are also available for streaming in the archive (a real find is Gustavo Dudamel conducting a Stravinsky program from March).

“It’s not making money yet,” says Berlin’s PR Chief, Elisabeth Hilsdorf, who is in Los Angeles this week with the orchestra, “but it’s not just an experiment; the goal is for it to go on forever.”  Hilsdorf says that the orchestra has been averaging about 2,000 people per event and needs 6,000 to 7,000 people to break even.

After I saw artistic director Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic three nights earlier this month at Carnegie Hall, the joy of the Digital Concert Hall was seeing the video:

Music review: Los Angeles Master Chorale at Disney Concert Hall

Having eagerly embraced the John Adams-curated Minimalist Jukebox festival three years ago,  Grant Gershon rounded up his Los Angeles Master Chorale for another Adams festival, West Coast, Left Coast, Sunday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall. 

Result – another innovative, sometimes off-kilter program that was unafraid to mix up the idioms, stretch outside the sanctified boundaries of so-called classical music, and provide a contemporary music experience that was both thoughtful and entertaining. 

This is what Gershon has done best in his nine years here – and it dovetailed right into the eclectic mission of West Coast, Left Coast. He even made a point of having all four of the evening’s composers present at the pre-concert talk and curtain calls, as if to shout that there is still plenty of life in the choral medium.

There was no mistaking the antiwar motivation – a programming bent that Gershon has pursued before – of Ingram Marshall’s “Savage Altars,” which juxtaposes narratives of Roman wars with extracts from the Magnificat that glorify the humble, and humble the mighty. But Marshall doesn’t hit you over the head with politics; he softens the impact with chiming digital sounds from a laptop and lyrical violin/viola backdrops. The choral writing is beguiling, overlapping, sometimes archaic, at one point breaking into a folksy dance.

Monster Mash: LACMA's red ink; Charlie Chaplin museum in Switzerland; Galileo's fingers

-- Financial trouble: LACMA loses 23% of its investments in the last fiscal year. One victim is Jeff Koons' dangling train project, which was scheduled to arrive at LACMA in 2011-12, and is now delayed for three more years. (Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg)

-- Little tramp: A long-planned museum dedicated to Charlie Chaplin, pictured, will be constructed at the site of the actor's former home in Switzerland. (Radio Suisse Romande)

-- Discovery: Two severed fingers and a tooth belonging to Galileo have been identified by a museum in Florence, Italy. (CNN)

-- Landing on their feet: Two actors from the recently closed Broadway revival of "Brighton Beach Memoirs" have landed roles in the upcoming revival of "A View from the Bridge." (New York Times)

-- Major project: A $208-million concert hall in Helsinki, Finland, is intended to improve on the existing Finlandia Hall, but it's already 50% over projected costs. (Bloomberg)

-- Winner: Jez Butterworth's "Jerusalem" was named best play at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards. (Playbill)

-- Operatic great: Swedish soprano Elisabeth Soderstrom has passed away at age 82. (Telegraph)

-- Moving up: "Enter Laughing," which has had two runs off-Broadway, is aiming for a Broadway engagement in the fall of 2010. (Variety)

-- And in the L.A. Times: The L.A. Philharmonic's "West Coast, Left Coast" festival begins; a look at the Broadway production of "Fela!"

-- David Ng

Photo:  Charlie Chaplin with Virginia Cherrill in a scene from "City Lights." Credit: Los Angeles Times

Music review: Terry Riley launches West Coast, Left Coast Festival

“IF THERE IS NO SEDUCTION, THERE IS NO MUSIC.”

The capitalized sentiment leapt off the page in Terry Riley’s program note for “Eureka!” the late-night opening event for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s West Coast, Left Coast festival Saturday night.

And thus -- after more than two hours of regimented warm-up from the Kronos Quartet, the electronic duo Matmos and guitarist and composer Michael Einziger -- did Riley commence the act of seduction, in the dictionary sense of leading a listener astray. As midnight neared, the godfather of Minimalism mounted the organ loft of Walt Disney Concert Hall and began his hourlong siren song.

A rainbow of organ colors poured forth. A shaman at work, Riley sometimes sang as he improvised channeling all that is mystical and magical in our glorious if dysfunctional state.

California, here we come.

Music review: Shanghai Symphony in Santa Barbara

In the field where Chinese composers and performers and Western classical music converge, East has been successfully meeting West long enough that the concept is closer to a norm -- or at least accepted cultural fact -- than a novelty. What remains rare, though, are local live concert encounters with Chinese ensembles dealing with such hybrids. That made the performance of the Shanghai Symphony, Friday at the Granada in Santa Barbara, a special occasion.

New and old matters were at hand, as China’s most venerable orchestra, dating to 1879, kicked off the 91st season of the Community Arts Music Association. After dealing fluently with Mussorgsky and Rachmaninoff (with young Chinese piano sensation Yuja Wang doing the lush and clean-machined honors on the “Rach 2” concerto), the orchestra delved into the definitively East-meets-West score of notable Chinese composer (living in Paris) Qigang Chen’s “Iris dévoilée (Iris unveiled)” and gave it a measured, captivating and discernibly “home turf” reading. For a change, the musical forces themselves, from a full, taut orchestra to Chinese instrumental soloists, came from the eastern end of the East-West spectrum.

Generally, the Shanghai Symphony --  which will perform in Costa Mesa on Tuesday -- is an impressive ensemble, led with precision and controlled passion by conductor Long Yu. They came out swooning on Friday, with Mussorgsky’s misty-wistful “Dawn on the Moscow River” (from his opera “Khovanshchina”) and a plush yet clear-headed take on Rachmaninoff. At the piano, the lovely and lithe Yuja showed -- to cop a cliché -- maturity beyond her years (22), resisting the Rach-ish temptation to venture into overly florid or self-absorbed stylization.

Simon Rattle is back in LA. with the Berlin Philharmonic

Angelenos remember Simon Rattle when. We know enough not to trust Wikipedia, which states that the Liverpool-born conductor made his U.S. debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1979. In fact, he appeared at the Hollywood Bowl three years earlier, as a 21-year-old with the London Schools Symphony Orchestra. He was still startlingly young when he began his 13-year stint as principal guest of the L.A. Philharmonic in 1981.

Now he is Sir Simon, music director of the mighty Berlin Philharmonic. It hasn’t been all Sunny Sir Simon, as the German capital dubbed him when he took over in 2002. But the orchestra, which appears with Rattle at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Monday and Tuesday nights, is now thriving, breaking new ground with its digital concert hall, outreach programs to schools and prisons, new music projects and a general attitude of waking classical music up to smell the coffee while honoring its incomparable tradition.

And, based on a brief conversation I had with Rattle for an Arts and Books article as he prepared for his U.S. tour, he is as hopeful, thoughtful and funny as ever. Having recently had his contract in Berlin extended until 2018, he has a mandate to continue the change he has brought to what is often considered the world’s most desirable orchestral job.

Click here for the full story.

-- Mark Swed 

Photo: Rattle in Berlin last April. Credit: John MacDougal/Getty Images

Music review: Gustavo Dudamel and Gil Shaham play Mozart and Berg

The great 20th century conductor Bruno Walter claimed he wasn’t ready to conduct Mozart until he was 50. This refined, unfussy musician believed the heaven-sent symphonies of a young composer who died at 35 were wasted on the young, with their immature tendencies to romanticize, their childish swagger, their puppy love.

Gustavo Dudamel, 28, opened and closed a Los Angeles Philharmonic program in Walt Disney Concert Hall Thursday night with two late, major Mozart symphonies – the “Prague” and “Jupiter.”  In an act of great seriousness, he used these scores to make an Alban Berg sandwich. The filling was Berg’s elegiac 12-tone Violin Concerto, written in “memory to an angel,” and the wondrously affecting swan song of the Austrian composer who died at 50 in 1935. The violinist was the still youthful Gil Shaham, 10 years Dudamel’s senior.

Obviously, we have no way of knowing whether Walter would have thought that Thursday’s performances had too much musical baby fat.

But I thought about this once-perfect Mozartean on Thursday. Dudamel uses a slightly smaller orchestra for the symphonies than was the custom in Walter’s day. And Dudamel upended the fast movements with rhythmically precise swift punches the way early musickers sometimes do with their flexible period instrument ensembles.

But, somehow, this Venezuelan, who has conducted the Vienna Philharmonic only a time or two (and most recently in Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky), excavated a long-lost Viennese character out of his new orchestra.