Music M10C/Music History M10C/Ethnomusicology 7C Introduction to Music: History, Culture, Creativity Fall, 2012 History of Music Musical Event

Report

The event I attended was a matinee performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, on September 30th 2012. Gustavo Dudamel conducted, and the program was as follows:

RAVEL: Pavane pour un infante defunte STUCKY: Symphony (world premiere) Intermission -

STRAVINSKY: The Rite of Spring

Audience members were mostly seated in front of the orchestra, with some behind the orchestra as well. Generally, the audience members were white, middle-aged or older, and apparently well-off. Several well-dressed young couples were seen too the wine and cheese type of citizen. Many eyes squinted in frustration at every audible cough.

The patron sitting next to me was a musician himself, and he and I talked about the new piece on concert. Steven Stucky was apparently a close friend of his, and would be in attendance at the performance.

Musicians, dressed in formal concert attire, were already onstage, warming up, by the time we entered. A small orchestra was used for the first piece, but more musicians entered after each work, culminating in a very large orchestra (I would say between 80 and 100?) for the Rite of Spring.

Dudamel entered the stage to much applause, and started conducting the Ravel. It was a quiet opening to the concert, with a small enough orchestra to be intimate but no larger than necessary. The audience clapped politely but quietly in accord to the quiet piece. The Ravel, it turned out, acted something like an appetizer to the first main course, which was Stuckys new Symphony. The piece had some beautiful moments, with some very striking sonorities, at turns brilliantly clear and dreamily hazy. The audience reacted approvingly, with prolonged applause. It was an impressive piece, if not necessarily a convincingly deep one, but the audience was dazzled enough, and perhaps thats what mattered, and maybe what people have come to expect when they go to the symphony. What beautiful sounds! I heard, but not How moving! The emperors new clothes of music, perhaps what people dont understand, they will try desperately to appreciate, and even then, only superficially so. Was there anything to understand, or move us? Or just pretty orchestral colors?

The Rite of Spring came after the intermission. It was noted in the program that the Rite was a signature piece of the orchestra under its previous conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen. Dudamel, however, did a fantastic job nonetheless, and led the now-huge orchestra to a delightfully earsplitting finish. The audience gave a standing ovation, complete with bravos that started the second the orchestra played the last note. A similar reaction to the Stucky ensued, for even in all its delicious savage splendor, The Rite impresses and moves by its sheer force, but not necessarily by its poeticism. Not that it isnt poetic, just that thats not what, I suspect, the audiences came to hear.