New book says the piano is most important instrument of all

Stuart Isacoff’s entertaining new book, “A Natural History of the Piano” (Knopf, $30), begins with the Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. To the author, Peterson represents an ideal entrée into the wonders of “the most important instrument ever created.”

“It’s a coming together of traditions into one great artist,” Isacoff explained by phone from New York. “The fact that Peterson was classically trained gave me the opportunity to set up the story.”

Isacoff, a pianist who teaches music at SUNY Purchase, weaves together seemingly disparate voices and piano-related subjects. He also uses informative sidebar contributions from well-known pianists, including Alfred Brendel, Yundi Li, Gabriela Montero and Billy Taylor.

Despite its full title of “A Natural History of the Piano: The Instrument, the Music, the Musicians -– From Mozart to Modern Jazz and Everything in Between,” the book is intentionally not encyclopedic. Its vignette-like structure conveys an improvisatory quality reflecting Isacoff’s own approach to the piano.

It was evident during a recital at Le Poisson Rouge last year, when Isacoff teased Harold Arlen's "Over the Rainbow" out of a Scriabin Prelude; while playing a Scarlatti Sonata, he suddenly segued into Jerome Kern's "Yesterdays."

Music review: Jeffrey Kahane conducts the L.A. Chamber Orchestra

At the Alex Theatre in Glendale on Saturday, Jeffrey Kahane led the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in works by Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Adès and Respighi. It was a night of musical and artistic tributes that brought the 17th and 18th centuries into the 21st.

Kahane and the orchestra fully conveyed the pathos in Ravel’s four-movement orchestrated version of his six-movement piano suite, "Le tombeau de Couperin," which opened the program. Begun by Ravel just before World War I as a tribute to the spirit of 18th-century French music, the score became a memorial to friends killed or wounded during that cataclysm. In the taxing oboe part, Allan Vogel supplied a poignant underpinning throughout, especially in the Menuet.

Tchaikovsky’s "Variations on a Rococo Theme," inspired by Mozart’s Classical elegance, gave listeners a chance to hear Texas-born cellist Ralph Kirshbaum, founding artistic director of L.A.’s upcoming inaugural Piatigorsky International Cello Festival. The cellist gave a technically uneven account that was nonetheless persuasive. Kirshbaum performed as if by feeling alone -– he never looked at his hands -- but his natural phrasing and poetry in the slower variations won out over moments of uncertain intonation and rough spots in technically demanding faster passages. His encore was an introverted reading of Bach’s Sarabande from the Suite No. 3.

After intermission, Kahane called Thomas Adès “already one of the greatest composers ever.” And based on his vibrant and colorful reading of the composer's "Three Studies From Couperin," it was hard to argue. The middle movement, which wittily deconstructs Couperin’s music, showcased LACO’s rhythmic suppleness.

While the string sections were being reconfigured -- Adès’ score required a double string orchestra -- violinist Julie Gigante honored the 20th anniversary of artist Kent Twitchell’s eight-story LACO tribute, “Harbor Freeway Overture,” which overlooks the northbound 110 Freeway downtown. Gigante, who is in the mural with fellow active ensemble members Vogel and principal violist Roland Kato, had Twitchell take a bow.

Then, Kahane and the orchestra gave an eloquent, songful rendition of Respighi's “The Birds.”

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-- Rick Schultz

Top photo: Cellist Ralph Kirshbaum and conductor Jeffrey Kahane. Credit: Ken Hively / For The Times. Lower photo: Kahane. Credit: Ken Hively / For The Times.

Music review: Evelyn Glennie and Maya Beiser at UCLA’s Royce Hall

Two extraordinary musicians, American cellist Maya Beiser and Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie, shared a program at UCLA's Royce Hall on Friday. Beiser and her ensemble performed in the first half; Glennie soloed in the second. They joined each other at the end for “Stuttered Chant,” a new short work written for them by David Lang.

It was an interesting experiment. Depending on your point of view, Beiser and Glennie as concert partners were either good value –- an amazing twofer -– or an odd, overflowing juxtaposition of contrasting temperaments and styles.

The turnout in the big hall felt sparse, and audience members were encouraged to move closer to the stage. Beiser and her ensemble -– Bassam Saba, oud; Shane Shanahan and Matt Kilmer, percussion -– performed all five works on her 2010 album, “Provenance,” nearly an hour of evocative, melancholy and emotional Middle Eastern music filtered through Beiser’s Western classical sensibility.

The cellist’s richly flavorful, idiomatic vibrato was just one of many delights in Kayhan Kalhor’s “I Was There,” composed for Beiser. Her half of the show ended with a restrained account of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” arranged for multi-track cello. Perhaps Beiser, who had prepared an encore, was being careful not to step on Glennie's upcoming set. In any case, modest applause did not generate one.

Music review: Apollo’s Fire and Philippe Jaroussky at Royce Hall

The French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky joined Apollo’s Fire Baroque Orchestra at Royce Hall on Friday for a thrilling UCLA Live program called “Handel and Vivaldi Fireworks.” The concert marked Jaroussky’s West Coast debut and the orchestra’s first Los Angeles appearance.

During a generous program that lasted almost 2 1/2 hours, the concertmaster, Olivier Brault, took time out to repair a broken string, and several of the ensemble’s 14 players paused for repeated tunings. It was all an authentic part of the Baroque experience, which included the playing of a very long-necked lute-like instrument called a theorbo.

In the first half, conductor and harpsichordist Jeannette Sorrell, who founded Apollo’s Fire in Cleveland in 1992, led an earthy account of the Allegro from Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso in D, after Concerto RV 511, and an affecting reading of his Concerto in G minor for Two Cellos, its touching Largo a highlight.

But the fireworks really ignited whenever Jaroussky took the stage. At 33, he owns a winning stage presence and a pure, radiant countertenor/soprano voice. He sang seven selections in the main program, including a passionate and finely characterized rendition of Orfeo’s recitative and aria “Ho perso il caro ben” from Handel’s “Il Parnasso in Festa.”

Jaroussky’s natural phrasing and control in coloratura flourishes were stunning, especially in “Con l’ali di costanza,” from Handel’s “Ariodante,” where, Sorrell told the audience, “joy takes the form of many notes.”

After intermission, Jaroussky turned to neglected Vivaldi arias, including “Frà le procelle,” from “Tito Manlio.” Apollo’s Fire gave him spirited support throughout. An enthusiastic audience called the singer and ensemble back for three encores, each exquisitely rendered: Porpora’s “Alto Giove” from “Polifemo”; Handel’s “Venti, turbini” from “Rinaldo”; and Handel’s “Ombra mai fu” from “Xerxes.”

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Encores? Hilary Hahn is happy to oblige

--Rick Schultz

Photos: Apollo’s Fire Baroque Orchestra  Credit: Roger Mastroianni

Philippe Jaroussky. Credit: Simon Fowler

 

ncores? Hilary Hahn is happy to oblige

Hilary Hahn and the encore: What's that again?

One of the more common problems for concertgoers is not being able to hear a performer announcing an encore. Violinist Hilary Hahn will doubtless have a microphone when she introduces the 13 encores she will be performing at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Tuesday.

But more often, as she said for an Arts & Books feature on encores, she’s reduced to shouting them out after a recital or concerto.

“It seems like when I announce encores, I get asked what I played,” Hahn said. “When I don’t announce them, people don’t ask. It’s very strange. Some people still can’t hear you when you shout. I’m not sure what I should do about that.”

The encores at Disney will be showcased in a main program that includes works by Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. They are part of her ongoing project, “In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores” -- 26 encores she commissioned for acoustic violin and piano from contemporary composers, with a 27^th  to be chosen next year from an online contest.

Hahn said she has tried using the Shazam! iPhone app to identify classical music on the radio, “but it just gets so confused.” The Shazam! company advertises the app’s ability to identify recorded music from a database of more than 10 million tracks, including classical. According to its promo material, it needs only four seconds of sound to identify the song, artist and even album art on your iPhone.

Music review: Giancarlo Guerrero conducts the Pacific Symphony

The theme of Thursday night’s concert by the Pacific Symphony at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall seemed to be music made famous by famous movies. That’s not as crass as it may sound when the music is Mozart’s Concerto No. 21 (“Elvira Madigan”), and Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” with its shattering opening fanfare used by Stanley Kubrick to begin his mystical space epic, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, who is in his third season as music director of the Nashville Symphony, included another famous score, also given a space-age spin in “2001”: Johann Strauss Jr.’s waltz “On the Beautiful Blue Danube.” (Would Strauss have liked knowing that Kubrick turned it into space Muzak?)

The concert opened with Alan Hovhaness’ “Prayer of St. Gregory,” a short meditative piece for strings and solo trumpet featuring the orchestra’s principal, Barry Perkins. He performed admirably, though a more rounded, ethereal tone would have been welcome.

Music review: Grant Gershon and the Los Angeles Master Chorale

On Sunday evening, the Los Angeles Master Chorale under Grant Gershon opened its 48th season at Walt Disney Concert Hall with a program exploring aspects of earthly life and eternity. Six a cappella works by living composers made up the concert's first half. They complemented and contrasted with Morten Lauridsen’s magisterial five-movement quasi-Requiem and celebration of light, “Lux Aeterna," performed after intermission.

The concert began with the U.S. premiere of Thomas Jennefelt’s “Music for a Big Church; for tranquility,” composed 20 years ago. This lovely, wordless sequence of mesmerizing vocal patterns sung in a “na-na” vocalise was given a shimmering minimalist vibe by Gershon and the choir. They also effortlessly illuminated the wide vocal palette of Eric Whitacre’s “Her Sacred Spirit Soars” for double chorus.

The choir’s associate conductor, Lesley Leighton, led Tarik O’Regan’s darker “Tal vez tenemos tiempo” (“Maybe we have time”), a resonant setting of Pablo Neruda’s poem. (Gershon conducted everything else.) Leighton, a longtime singer with the choir, then joined the chorale for “Heavenly Home: Three American Songs,” arranged with mastery by Shawn Kirchner. A veteran member of the ensemble’s tenor section, Kirchner uses American folk sources for “Unclouded Day,” “Angel Band” and “Hallelujah.” The choir conveyed the spirit of each with impressive phrasing and dynamic control.

The Master Chorale gave the premiere of Lauridsen’s “Lux Aeterna” in 1997, and the half-hour piece has since grown in stature. In a pre-concert talk, Lauridsen said the work represents “the triumph of light over darkness.” It’s also a luminously intimate and personal score. It was written while Lauridsen was the choir's composer-in-residence and partly reflects a healthy consolatory grief he felt after the loss of his mother. He turned those feelings into transporting art. While some might miss the orchestral version’s grandeur and scope, this arrangement for choir and organ, with Paul Meier at the console, brought greater prominence to the score’s hypnotic vocal blend and radiant spiritual beauty. The choir's purity of sound conjured a timeless quality. It felt like only five minutes had passed. During the concluding Agnus Dei, many members of the choir began to sway individually, apparently in their own meditative space.

The sold-out audience maintained total silence until well after the final Amen, and stood as Lauridsen came to the stage. There was a great roar when the choir stood.

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-- Rick Schultz

Above: Morten Lauridsen in a 2005 photo. Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

 

Music review: Gloria Cheng opens Piano Spheres’ 18th season

The late composer Luciano Berio called his small but potent book of Harvard lectures “Remembering the Future.” And that seemingly paradoxical phrase informed Gloria Cheng’s nearly all-British Piano Spheres program Tuesday night at the Colburn School’s Zipper Hall.

In the first half, the pianist offered the United States premiere of Bernard Rands’ 12 Preludes. An impressionistic, emotionally draining 40-minute work, it’s the first of 15 premieres planned this season by the venerable recital series, now in its 18th year.

Before the performance, the English-born Rands, based in the United States since 1975 (he became a citizen in 1983), touchingly told the audience that he owed “much of what I am as a musician” to Berio, his mentor and friend. And a Berio-like sense of music history and lyricism pervaded Rands’ Preludes. Dedicated to the pianist Robert Levin, who performed the world premiere in 2007, the score conjured a sound world that Debussy would recognize. At the same time, the melancholy cast of many of the pieces was Rands’ own.

Cheng’s precision, warm tone and sensitive, resonant pedaling conveyed enough variety to put the largely elegiac work across, whether in the fourth Prelude, Elegia (In memoriam Luciano Berio), the introspective eighth, Lamento, or the haunting concluding Notturno (In memoriam Don Martino).

Music review: Bramwell Tovey and Joyce Yang with the L.A. Phil

Who knew that in a program of war horses at the Hollywood Bowl the standout work would be Gounod’s Ballet Music from “Faust”? On Thursday night, guest conductor Bramwell Tovey and the Los Angeles Philharmonic offered committed renditions of Berlioz’s "Roman Carnival" Overture, Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2, with Joyce Yang as soloist, and Respighi’s evergreen “Pines of Rome.” But it was the Gounod that fascinated.

Tovey told the audience of 5,672 that L.A. Phil musicians were surprised during the performance's rehearsal how many familiar tunes constitute Gounod’s suite. It was last performed by the orchestra at the Bowl in 1977, with Mitch Miller conducting.

“I apologize for repeating it so soon,” Tovey cracked, “but these pieces are so charming and delightful, they are worth repeating every 34 years.” Tovey and the Philharmonic gave a buoyant lilt to each of the seven sections, concluding with a vital Danse du Phryné.

Yang performed the concerto with compelling virtuosity and sensitivity. She was attuned to the score’s mock-operatic seriousness while also conveying the glitter and Mendelssohnian delicacy of the popular Scherzo. In 2009, she gave an account of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at the Bowl, her tone overly bright and thin. This time, the pianist’s tone was rich and full. She seemed to be having fun dispatching the athletic and demanding virtuoso passages, especially in the score’s Presto finale, a whirling tarantella dance. Tovey and the Philharmonic proved equal partners.

Music review: L.A. Phil with Slatkin, Olga Kern at Hollywood Bowl

No two musicians seemed more unalike. There was the tall 36-year-old Russian pianist Olga Kern, known for her flamboyant, quirky and operatic temperament, towering over mild-mannered guest conductor Leonard Slatkin. But on Thursday at the Hollywood Bowl, their rapport proved ideal as he led her and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in an expansive, sensational account of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Slatkin and the Philharmonic allowed Kern plenty of room, at the same time firmly supporting and sustaining the inspired ebb and flow of her interpretation. Though Kern may have ebbed and flowed a bit too much in the melodious 18th variation, her fierce concentration and absolute mastery of this daunting score made it work. She blazed through its many difficult passages, articulating them cleanly. She also warmly conveyed its many moments of repose. It was a mischievous account, suiting the composer’s witty inventions, and Kern’s delivery of the finale’s surprisingly quiet coda elicited audible delight from the audience of 7,903.

A prolonged standing ovation brought Kern back for a single encore: Rachmaninoff’s Moments musicaux Op.16, No. 4, crisply executed.

After intermission, Slatkin and the Philharmonic returned with Brahms’ elegiac Fourth Symphony in a relaxed, perfectly paced reading. Slatkin, who has been conducting at the Bowl since the '70s, obviously knows some acoustical secrets of this large venue. Instrumental sonorities were exquisitely balanced, and never sounded artificially amplified.

The concert’s curtain-raiser, the Philharmonic’s first performance of Elliott Carter’s "Holiday" Overture, written in 1944 to celebrate the Allied liberation of Paris, was terrific. Its brassy Coplandesque exuberance could hardly hide Carter’s own complexly rhythmic voice just starting to emerge. Carter, who will turn 103 in December, still had a lot more to say.

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--Rick Schultz

Photo: Leonard Slatkin at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday. Credit: Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times