A Triumphant Post-Covid Return to Disney Hall with Korngold and Brahms
/By Truman C. Wang
11/26/2021
This fine concert, perhaps more than any I have heard since the post-Covid reopening of the Disney Hall, showed the spirit of resilience and optimism in the face of grave adversity. The lush, romantic strains of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto resonated in the warm acoustics of the auditorium, the radiant strings soaring high over the ebb and flow of sea currents, whilst the dulcet tone of Scottish-Italian violinist Nicola Benedetti’s Gariel Stradivarius sang sweetly and consolingly with angelic grace. The rousing swashbuckling finale, played with joyous abandon and vigor, recalled the Golden Age of Hollywood in all its Technicolor splendor.
Australian conductor Simone Young’s masterful control of the orchestral color palette was on full display in the Brahms Symphony No. 4. The overall feel of the symphony is dark and foreboding, from the autumnal strings in the opening bars of the first Allegro, and accentuated by the second movement’s archaic Phrygian mode (under maestro Young, the sweetly-spun viola melody achieved a Schubertian eloquence.) Several climaxes break through the dark clouds in a defiance against fate, most thrillingly in the finale that ends triumphantly and majestically in the E-Minor key. In this regard, Brahms was the rightful successor of Beethoven, whose Symphony No. 9 also ends in victory over its minor key (in D).
The eight-minute work, Uncertain Planning, by Australian composer Connor D’Netto, written in mid-2020 during the height and despair of the Covid lockdown, is full of disquieting imagery of dystopia and paradise lost, but ends in “gentle hope and burning determination” (from the composer’s program notes).
All in all, a most uplifting, satisfying performance, attended by a fully-masked and vaccinated audience at near capacity who enthusiastically applauded at the end of every movement. The program will be repeated on Saturday 11/27 and Sunday 11/28. Be sure to arrive early for parking and vaccination/ID check.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.