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L.A. Goes For Metzmacher Los Angeles
Dorothy Chandler Music Pavilion
03/25/2000 -
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 2 (1801-2)
Bernd Alois Zimmermann Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra ("Nobody knows de
trouble I see") (1954; West Coast premiere)
Karl Amadeus Hartmann Symphony No. 6 (1951-53)
Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)
Los Angeles Philharmonic, Ingo Metzmacher (conductor) Ingo Metzmacher conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in an all-German program Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Despite the intense political and personal struggles of each, Bernd Alois Zimmermann nor Karl Amadeus Hartmann are obscure names to all but the most sophisticated classical music lovers in Los Angeles. Perhaps because it was Oscar weekend in the town where Oscar works, the Philharmonic had done little advance publicity. Whatever the reason, the audience in the orchestra looked half full at best, and the Philharmonic’s players looked out disconsolately as they came on stage.
Undaunted, the General Music Director of Hamburg Opera and Principal Guest Conductor of the Bamberg Symphony began with a boldly sleek and shiny performance of Beethoven’s Second Symphony that gained from his dividing the violins, and putting the cellos (and behind them the double basses) between the firsts and the violas. This seating arrangement increased orchestral detail without detracting from the Philharmonic’s usual rich sound. But as the music went on, it became obvious that this was a performance in the homogenized modern style: It lacked the dynamic range to grab hold of the audience and shake it; it lacked any individual personality. It lacked shape and fire and poetry.
The first West Coast performance of Zimmermann’s Trumpet Concerto proved to be a vastly more memorably experience. The music was fluent, exciting and engrossing, with a little night music at the end (it is inconceivable that it has not been recorded by the leading trumpet virtuosos). The performance too was dazzling, coherent and bright, and Hardenberger’s ability to project a wide variety of sound, with and without mutes, was amazing. The performance would have further benefited from more of the biting, sexy swing that Zimmermann explicitly requests, but the audience didn’t seem to mind as they roared their approval at the end.
The persuasive performance of Hartmann’s Sixth Symphony made it easy to see why Metzmacher's confident, highly articulate and lyrical way with this unfamiliar repertoire has excited such international enthusiasm. Perhaps the cataclysmic explosions could have erupted more violently, the strings could have sung more sweetly, and the whole orchestral fabric could have surged more passionately. Still, with only a week’s worth of few rehearsals, it was an impressive testimony to the Philharmonic that they were able to convey the power of Hartmann's tremendous energy particularly the short bursts of harmonic continuity and the seductive solo passages that occasionally rise above the orchestral clatter with such a powerful combination of melodic detail and rhythmic propulsion.
Laurence Vittes
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