A week in review - two powerhouse young conductors enliven L.A. Phil

By Truman Wang
March 28, 2010

Saturday, March 20, 2010

ROBIN TICCIATI, conductor
   Lars Vogt, piano

Thursday, March 25, 2010

LIONEL BRINGUIER, conductor
   Emanuel Ax, piano

Englishman Robin Ticciati, conducting last Saturday evening’s mostly Nordic program, showed he was equally at home in the standard and unfamiliar repertories.  The early work of Jean Sibelius, King Christian II Suite, received an invigorating reading that gave more importance to this salon dance music than perhaps it deserved.  Same goes for an imposing account of Swedish composer Magnus Lindberg’s 2002 work, Chorale – supposedly inspired by J.S. Bach, but in reality mired in dense, murky harmonies that moved along at a glacial pace for six unpleasant minutes.   There is a reason why such new-age ‘experimental’ works are always programmed at the top of the program in order to guarantee an audience.  Not my cup of English tea, perhaps, but well executed nonetheless.

Much more palatable were the repertory warhorses, Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A-minor and Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations.  German pianist Lars Vogt proved an ideal collaborator and equal partner for conductor Ticciati’s uncommonly spacious but wholly lyrical reading of this well-known score.  After the famous opening burst of triplets on the piano, the tempi slowed to a dangerous crawl, the piano and woodwinds exchanging melodic bits almost in an improvisatory manner.  It was startling to hear at first, but by the time of the final cadenza (there are many mini-cadenzas in this piece), a heaven-storming tour de force by Vogt, it all gelled together thanks to the strength of the partnership.   The Adagio, beautifully phrased, conveyed the requisite sense of wonder and awe of nature by the pianist and the muted strings of the orchestra.  It was followed by a wildly exhilarating foot-stomping finale, briefly interrupted by Catherine Ransom Karoly’s radiant flute solo.

Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations is a quintessential English work that contains passages of great virtuosity as well as good hearty humor that is often ‘lost in translation’ under non-British conductors  (A lot of the humor has to do with public drunkenness or Chaucer-like bawdy musical jokes).  The London-born maestro Ticciati directed the Enigma theme and its fourteen variations with great warmth and genial humor, notably in the whiplashing R.P.A. (No. 5) and the intensely searing Nimrod (No. 9).   It was one of the great readings of the Elgar that I had heard live or on record.

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Moving on to Thursday, March 25, on the podium was 23-year-old French conductor Lionel Bringuier.  One had the distinct feeling, by the fluid manner in which he shaped the slow opening phrase of the Berlioz overture, Le corsaire (the pirate), that he was much older than his age.  After the pensive, romantically charged section, the overture ended in a brash, swashbuckling coda that gave the L.A. Phil musicians a rigorous workout as if in preparation for the similarly-structured Shostakovich Symphony No. 6 (slow-fast-faster) that was to come.

The pianist on this occasion was the Polish-born Emanuel Ax, who played Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F-minor with an easy eloquence and finesse, but there was something lacking – a magical touch that a Horowitz or an Argerich could bring to this music.  Take the long-breathed cantilena of the Larghetto, for example, which Chopin wrote in the style of the early 19^th-Century Italian belcanto opera arias, Mr. Ax’s playing was full of delicate filigree and elegance (a few smudged notes nonewithstanding) with a gently swaying tempo di rubato – a reading so beautiful in its self-contained perfection that it would not allow any Romantic angst to filter in.  It was good Chopin playing that just fell short of greatness.  For his part, maestro Bringuier happily played second fiddle to the all-important piano, matching the soloist in the elegance and lightness of utterance.

After the intermission, we heard the aforementioned Shostakovich Symphony No. 6 in B-minor.   This rather lopsided symphony opens with a fifteen-minute slow movement that is brooding, pensive and in complete contrast to the frenetic whirlwind later movements.  Maestro Bringuier coaxed some expressive playing from the lower strings and paced the slow opening admirably.  The next movement, Allegro, bustled with free-wheeling woodwinds like a swarm of  bumblebees.  The final Presto (or Prestissimo in this case) was launched with astonishing speed and marshaled the L.A. Phil’s entire battalion of percussions for the explosive frenzies in the final bars.  The ecstatic audience jumped to their feet in a long ovation. 

So, even though our resident maestro was not in the house, one could feel the ‘Dudamel Effect’ with these two talented and dynamic young maestros, who proved more than capable of filling his shoes. 

The ‘Dude’ himself will return to the Disney Hall to conduct Bernstein on April 22.   

 

To purchase tickets for Los Angeles Philharmonic's 2009/10 season, call (323) 850-2000 or visit online www.laphil.org

 

Truman C. Wang is editor-in-chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the Pasadena Star-News, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily.

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