Mason Concerts 2025: The Opening Two Programs

l-r: Todd Mason, Chloé Tardif, Tim Durkovic, Cécilia Tsan, Kyle Gilner, Luke Maurer (March 29).

REVIEW

• The Debussy Trio play Rota, Mason, and Bax, February 22

• Five LA stars play Mozart, Mason, and Schumann, March 29

JOHN STODDER, JR.

The 2025 Mason House season is underway, with its usual rich programs of chamber music fitted inside a modest West Los Angeles living room with remarkable acoustics and room to seat up to 50 classical music fans, plus a backyard patio where wine and food are available from a buffet donated to each gathering by Ethel Phipps. Due to the LA fires, Todd Mason was forced to postpone his first concert in the series from January until June, but the following two took place as scheduled, and the next one is just around the corner on April 12. Here is a review of February’s concert, and a brief account of March’s.

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The Debussy Trio, February 22: Harp Liberation

Nino Rota (1911-1979): Sonata for Flute and Harp (1937)

I. Allegro molto moderato

II. Andante sostenuto

III. Allegro festoso

Todd Mason (b.1957): Magical, for flute, viola, and harp (2023) 

I. Andante (Sunrise)

II. Adagietto (Daydreams)

III. Allegro moderato (Magic Carpet)

Arnold Bax (1883-1953): Fantasy Sonata for Viola and Harp, GP 284 (1927)

I. Allegro molto

II. Allegro moderato

III. Lento espressivo

IV. Allegro.

If you attended this concert by The Debussy Trio (Angela Wiegand, flute; David Walther, viola; Marcia Dickstein, harp), you came away from it knowing more about one of the most readily identifiable instruments in all of music, the harp. The sold-out audience was treated to discussions from the perspectives of a musicologist (the LA Philharmonic’s frequent pre-concert educator Dr. Kristi Brown), from a composer who has written chamber music for harp (Todd Mason, whose Magical was played here), and finally from Ms. Dickstein, who spoke memorably about perception vs. reality in the tough world of harp music.

“I have worked my entire career to take it out of the restaurant, to take it out of being that ‘Oh isn’t that sweet and pretty?’ No, it’s not, it’s a m---f--- to play,” she said. “I want people to have an opinion about my instrument. I wanted it to be respected for being able to play incredibly difficult music. It’s a really great instrument. But listen to it and judge it like you would a piano. Because you know great piano playing, you know great violin playing and hopefully you’ll know great harp playing.”

The Debussy Trio: David Walther, viola; Marcia Dickstein, harp; Angela Wiegand, flute.

Mason said it’s a challenge for a modern composer accustomed to changing keys at will to write for the harp because it is a diatonic instrument, meaning it only has seven notes, A-G, corresponding to the white keys on the piano. To reach the sharps and the flats, Dickstein must use the harp’s seven pedals, which give each string three potential notes. “Depending on where my feet are, I can be wrong in every imaginable (way),” Dickstein said.

Attending a rehearsal, Mason noticed how busy her feet were as she kept up with his key changes. But Dickstein made it clear that, at least speaking for herself, she didn’t want composers dialing back on the modulations to spare the harpist. Instead, she seeks out challenging, wonderful music for her instrument.

The Debussy Trio is named after the chamber music lineup defined by those instruments, trios for flute, viola and harp being first popularized by Claude Debussy with his 1915 Sonata, L. 137. Within the niche of chamber music, this piece has had a big influence. Among more than 50 composers since Debussy who wrote for this configuration are Darius Milhaud, Maurice Duruflé and Walter Piston, while Wikipedia lists almost 40 flute, viola and harp trios that perform throughout the world.

Dr. Kristi Brown.

In her pre-concert talk, Dr. Brown described the “connective tissue of sound” that the Debussy-style trio encompasses and presents to the ear. It is an unusual combination but the three contrasting sounds “vibe together,” she said, in the interchange between the continuous notes of the flute, the plucked notes of the harp and the viola’s ability to do both.

In this concert, only Mason’s composition used the full trio lineup. As he explained, Magical is a programmatic piece, a surreal three-part narrative about daydreams that ends with a magic carpet ride above the city “watching things change.” The instrumentation was perfect for conveying the images he created. I especially loved the way the second movement, “Daydreams,” opened with a viola solo that extended a kind of invitation to the flute and then the harp to wander through a dreamscape where alluring fragments of melody floated into each other, striving to connect but then letting go, finally letting the viola take over and bring the daydreamer back to reality.

Helicopter view of downtown Los Angeles.

To describe the final movement, my notes say this: “Like a slow gallop, like a magic horse playfully riding the waves of air.” The music in this section was joyous and fun in its evocation of flight, but I couldn’t help but be reminded of the images on TV from helicopters flying over an LA transformed by fire. But the music pushed those images out of my mind and took me back to the reassuring narrative of touring the cityscape on a flying carpet.

Nino Rota is a familiar name to fans of classic mid-century Italian cinema, especially the films of Federico Fellini, for whom Rota’s role was more like a collaborator. No one who’s seen 8½, La Dolce Vita, or Amarcord can possibly remember scenes without recalling Rota’s musical accents. He also wrote award-winning soundtracks for Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. In all, he wrote 171 film scores between 1933 and 1979.

Nino Rota, aged 12 (1923).

But at the time he wrote his Sonata for Flute and Harp, he was an already renowned young composer, a former child prodigy, and a student of composition at a conservatory in Rome. He did write one movie score in 1933 but would not complete another until 1942, so this Sonata came about five years before he committed to the art form that made him world famous.

For film buffs and fans of Rota’s, this piece was a chance to hear what might have been, the road not taken. But the piece itself seemed to fit into exactly what we know about his music. The expertly played flute opening to the first movement signaled happiness and a carefree attitude. A subsequent harp solo was gorgeous, cheerful, and uncomplicated. Images came to mind immediately that matched the sounds.

Fellini and Giuletta Masina.

The second movement was more formal and austere, and it perfectly conveyed that seriousness. Rota might be a genius at conveying identifiable emotions. Moment to moment, you didn’t need to guess what human feeling this composer was trying to express. I thought of the soulful eloquence of Fellini’s wife and frequent star, Giuletta Masina, whose face was like Rota’s melodies—a perfect mirror of emotion. It was fascinating to hear a Nino Rota unconnected with film and yet writing music that seemed like a calling-card for the masterful scores he would go on to write.

Arnold Bax in 1922.

The Arnold Bax piece that David Walther and Marcia Dickstein performed after the intermission was a dense beauty. Bax wrote a lot of music that included the harp, including a single-movement Elegiac Trio scored for just this combination of flute, viola and harp. But Dickstein doesn’t prefer that and instead presented the 1927 Fantasy Sonata for Viola and Harp. “The harp writing is really hard, but it’s really good. It takes you to the edge of what’s playable.”

Before my Mason House concertgoing career began, I’d never heard of the prolific British composer Arnold Bax, but I’m becoming a fan. Dickstein’s and Walther’s passionate and sensitive playing conveyed Bax’s lonely, brooding reflections on rural Ireland and its vast beauty. Like his more famous contemporary, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Bax defines his Britishness through meditations on nature and place. But Bax seems to try less hard to paint the perfect picture, instead making room for more idiosyncratic reflections.

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“Mozart-Mason-Schumann”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, K. 478 (1785)

I. Allegro

II. Andante

III. Rondo

Todd Mason: L’etreinte de l’amour for string quartet (2108)

Robert Schumann (1810-1856): Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44 (1842)

I. Allegro brillante

II. In Modo d’una Marcia. Un poco largamente

III. Scherzo. Molto vivace 

IV. Allegro, ma non troppo.

Five weeks later, I returned to Mason House, this time for a very different concert played by five of LA’s most outstanding musicians, Kyle Gilner and Chloé Tardif (violins), Luke Maurer (viola), Cécilia Tsan (cello), and Tim Durkovic (piano). This culminated in a warm, powerful performance of Schumann’s Piano Quintet, which followed Mozart’s First Piano Quartet and Todd Mason’s L’etreinte de l’amour. The concert opened with a performance of the Ukrainian national anthem, arranged by Mason for string quartet to commemorate the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

This is not really a full review—I didn’t anticipate writing one and didn’t make notes—but if it was a full review, it would be a rave. For those who have read the Pink Section of the San Francisco Chronicle, this review will be only slightly more substantial than the picture of the Little Man. The verdict on this concert: The Little Man is leaping out of his chair.

And, come to think of, I leapt out of my chair after each piece was completed. I was not alone in this. Mason House audiences know their classical music and know not to applaud between movements, but on this night, they did. This was a concert that moved the audience physically, especially the Schumann Quintet, a powerful, heroic, overtly Romantic masterpiece, where each movement gives the musicians opportunity after opportunity to make a loud, visceral impression. The notes may fade from my memory, but I will never forget how Cécilia Tsan’s bow mashing her resonant C string made me feel.

Individually and then as a roaring ensemble, her companions Tim Durkovic, Kyle Gilner, Chloé Tardif, and Luke Maurer all had moments that also resonated for me physically, that made me want to stand up and pretend to conduct them, or march around the room. The Piano Quintet is also lavishly, emphatically melodic to the point where I was quietly humming along with it. It was a rare treat to hear such a big piece in such an intimate space. I feel tattooed by it.

To take nothing away from the other performances—of the Mozart Piano Quartet, a mighty piece in its own right, albeit more restrained and judicious in its use of noise; nor of Mason’s short, loving string quartet honoring a relative’s wedding—but I’m most grateful that musicians of the caliber of Gilner, Tardif, Maurer, Tsan, and Durkovic gave so much of themselves to deliver the Schumann. This was a performance never to forget.

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Mason Home Concerts, 3484 Redwood Ave., Mar Vista, CA 90066, 6:00 p.m.

• The Debussy Trio, Saturday, February 22, 2025. 

• Mozart-Mason-Schumann, Saturday, March 29, 2025.

Images: The performances: Todd Mason; Helicopter view: Brian L. Frank, courtesy los-angeles-helicopter-tours.com; Fellini and Masina: everythingbutpopcorn.com; Bax: Herbert Lambert, courtesy National Portrait Gallery.

Icons, Inspiration, and Metamorphoses at Long Beach

Arturo Sandoval performs his Trumpet Concerto No. 2 in the Terrace Theater with the Long Beach Symphony under Music Director Eckart Preu.

REVIEW

Long Beach Symphony, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach

DAVID J BROWN

As with so many in the LA area, some Long Beach Symphony musicians have lost their homes or been displaced by the recent fires. Some have lost everything, including essential concert attire. If you are able to help, please consider making a contribution through this online form.

The fourth concert in the LBSO’s 90th anniversary 2024-2025 Classical series was billed under the tagline “Musical Fusion with Arturo Sandoval,” and there were indeed fusions and links—musical, personal, and locational—all over this event, which was even more celebratory than usual and as ever performed under the baton of Music Director Eckart Preu.

One link not represented, however, was any kinship of blood between Adam Schoenberg (b.1980), composer of the opening work, and his famously challenging (sur)namesake, Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)—respectively present and former LA residents—though in an engaging pre-concert chat with Maestro Preu (left), Adam Schoenberg did reveal that his 4th great-grandfather was also 4th great-grandfather to George Gershwin, composer of the work next on the program after his own piece.

Certainly there’s no hint of rigorous 20th-century modernism in Cool Cat (2023), the short concert opener commissioned from Schoenberg by the Los Angeles Philharmonic as a tribute to P-22, the puma that became isolated in the city’s Griffith Park and survived there for a decade until he was caught and euthanized in 2022. There’s no denying that this was an effective start to the program in the LBSO’s energized performance, but at risk of being the party-pooper, I found myself oddly averse to both the nature of the commission and the piece itself, which to me was five minutes of forgettable, if skillfully wrought, sub-John Williams orchestral heroics, all aspiring horns and trumpets interlaced with much percussion, led by four deep toms.

As for the commission, there seemed something just a bit distasteful about the Hollywood-style mythologizing and romanticizing of the animal’s situation, trapped as he was by two monster freeways into an area that Wikipedia notes as being 31 times too small for the typical range needed by his species in the Santa Monica Mountains, and found to be chronically malnourished and suffering from multiple injuries and ailments when he was finally captured. Though Schoenberg notes that he “was specifically asked to not write an elegy” (so fair enough), it’s possible to conceive of a very different creative response to P-22’s plight.

Gershwin (right) in Cuba with
 the actor Frank Morgan.

With Rhapsody in Blue and the Second Rhapsody in 2018, An American in Paris in 2023, and the Concerto in F last November, this concert’s inclusion of the Cuban Overture by George Gershwin (1898-1937) brought Preu and the LBSO close to a complete survey of his standalone orchestral works.

Billed as Rumba but retitled Cuban Overture after its 1932 premiere for more concert cred, the work might well also be dubbed “An American in Cuba,” reflecting as it does Gershwin’s reveling delight in the island’s culture and Havana night-life as enjoyed on a recent vacation, and in specific musical terms the then-exotic Caribbean rhythms and percussion sounds.

After Cool Cat’s hectic triumphalism, the Cuban Overture brought a welcome re-set with the amiable swagger of its initial Moderato e molto ritmato, and then balm to the ear when a couple of minutes into the first part of the work’s ABA structure the massed violins sang out the long-breathed main theme against an ear-tickling ensemble of bongos, claves, gourd, and maracas wielded with pin-point delicacy by the LBSO’s intrepid percussion team. Principal clarinet Sérgio Coelho gave all the required expressive freedom to the brief quasi-cadenza with which Gershwin introduces the dreamy Sostenuto central section, and then with the opening music’s return at a faster Allegretto ritmato, Preu pressed pedal to the metal all the way to a deliriously exuberant end.

Then it was time for the star of the show, with a rapturous welcome for the 10-times Grammy award-winning, Cuban-born (there lay another correspondence), jazz trumpeter and composer Arturo Sandoval (b. 1949), who introduced and played his Trumpet Concerto No. 2 (2017). After a grandly scene-setting opening flourish for soloist and orchestra, the first movement proceeded with unabashed joyous romanticism, slowing for a melody that bore a more than passing resemblance to “Tara’s Theme” from Max Steiner’s Gone With The Wind score, before arriving at a suitably heroic conclusion.

Wistful nostalgia characterized the central Andante sostenuto, where eloquent duetting for harp (Marcia Dickstein) and flute (Diane Alancraig) prefaced the trumpet’s long-drawn main theme. The finale’s opening was surprisingly subdued, belying its Allegro maestoso marking, but the percussion cohort rekindled those Cuban rhythms and sounds, and the first movement's robust optimism soon returned. Towards the end, Sandoval’s score briefly hands over the trumpet's extravagant roulades and flourishes to a solo violin, with concertmaster Roger Wilkie here seamlessly assuming the aural pyrotechnics before the final trumpet-topped climax. The near-capacity audience loved it all.

Hindemith in the 1940s.

After the interval came a sea-change, not so much of pace but of sensibility. Though his works rarely appear in concert programs now, Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) was a greatly accomplished (many would simply say, great) German composer, theoretician, and teacher, whose career continued to flourish after Nazi disapproval drove him to emigrate, eventually to the US in 1940.

His Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber embodied some music composed three years earlier for an abortive ballet project, but as completed in 1943 exhibits few signs of balletic origins. Hindemith justifies his titular “symphonic” with a four-movement, medium-fast/scherzo/slow/medium-fast structure, though given its brilliant timbral explorations it could equally be regarded as a “concerto for orchestra.” Amongst his considerable orchestral output, the Symphonic Metamorphosis thus tends to be characterized as an exuberant showpiece, but Preu and the LBSO’s scorching performance revealed the piece, to this listener at least, to be far more than just that.

Weber in 1814.

Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) is sometimes dubbed the “father of German musical Romanticism,” but Hindemith’s reworking of four of his piano duets was wholly of its own time. Listening to the infectious swagger of the opening Allegro it was easy to picture a military parade, an impression which was reinforced in the concluding Marsch—that army was now literally on the march, and meant business.

By contrast, Hindemith in his third movement Andantino manages—whether by design it’s impossible to know—to conjure up in just four minutes a similar sense of tragic war aftermath to that depicted in Prokofiev’s “Field of the Dead” from Alexander Nevsky. But perhaps most telling in this context is the Turandot Scherzo, the second and much the longest and most elaborately constructed movement in the Symphonic Metamorphosis.

Taking a faux chinois melody that Weber borrowed and reworked in his Incidental music for Turandot, J. 37 (1809), Hindemith subjects it to torrential repetition, starting innocently enough in flute and piccolo but then passing from instrument to instrument and section to section with seemingly endless resourcefulness and growing vehemence until, blared out by the brass over swirling strings, it culminates in a cymbal-clashing orchestral explosion. Still not done, after subdued string quiverings Hindemith brings the tune back yet again, now with a jazzy syncopated gloss (a nod to Gershwin, perhaps?), and sends it flying around the orchestra with extra counterpoints and percussion interjections until again it explodes, this time into a receding tintinnabulation of bells and other percussion that ends the movement.

Maestro Preu’s detailed spoken introduction to the work vividly conveyed his esteem for it, just as his ability to infect his orchestra with that esteem was manifest in the LBSO’s performance. I’d never previously heard the Turandot Scherzo played with such force and menace, a lemming-like “rush to destruction” that somewhat recalled the comparably repetitive and threatening “Nazi march” in the first movement of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 “Leningrad.” To my ears, Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis is just as much a “wartime work,” with all that implies.

Finally came the first performance of SERGE, a six-minute conflation of the main themes from the latter two movements of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, arranged by the Southern California-based composer and orchestrator Bob Barrett in collaboration with and for Arturo Sandoval, whose heart-on-sleeve declaration of love for the original and desire to perform (some of) it, as well as his playing of those so-familiar melodic lines, surely won over any grumpy purists present.

And, of course, there were encores. First, the star of the show reminisced movingly about his humble Cuban origins and his meeting and eventual friendship and collaboration with Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993), who helped enable Sandoval to defect to the USA while on tour with the band in Athens in 1990. As he fervently lauded the freedom he’d found in America after living in Castro’s repressive regime, it was difficult not to be aware of a certain elephant in the room.

In a perfect segue, Arturo Sandoval followed up with his own tribute to his friend and mentor, singing, for “Dear Diz,” Every Day I Think of You, to discreet and lulling accompaniment from Preu and the orchestra. He then ended with an exhortation to the near-capacity audience, on its feet now, to join in When the Saints Go Marching In. They did.

Arturo Sandoval at the post-concert
reception with Eckart Preu.

Belying the program’s rather scrappy look on paper, in which the Hindemith seemed to stand head and shoulders above the rest in sheer musical heft and invention, this proved to be a huge success for Arturo Sandoval, Eckart Preu, and the Long Beach Symphony.

Given the orchestra’s excellence from top to bottom, it’s invidious to single out any more individuals, but given that the larger-than-usual percussion cohort was central to the success of each work, a collective shout-out is deserved for Brian Cannady, Tyler Stell, Scott Higgins, Damion Friggillana, Nick Stone, and Milton Salazar, together with timpanist Gary Long.

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Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach, Saturday, March 8, 2025, 7.30 p.m.

Images: The performance: author and Long Beach Symphony; Gershwin: Getty Images; Hindemith and Weber: Wikimedia Commons.

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Beethoven, Bluegrass, and Danzón at Long Beach

Composer Michael Torke, violinist Tessa Lark, and Music Director Eckart Preu discuss Torke’s
violin concerto Sky before the performance with the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra.

REVIEW

Long Beach Symphony, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach

DAVID J BROWN

As with so many in the LA area, some Long Beach Symphony musicians have lost their homes or been displaced by the recent fires. Some have lost everything, including essential concert attire. If you are able to help, please consider making a contribution through this online form.

The Long Beach Symphony’s first classical concert of 2025 under its Music Director Eckart Preu gave what might well be regarded as a typical Preu program: a higher-than-industry-standard proportion of music by living composers, in this case a highly listenable pairing of works, based on popular music idioms as is often the case, from both sides of the US/Mexico border, together with a familiar Classical masterpiece.

Arturo Márquez.

First up was Danzón No. 2 (1994) by the Mexican composer Arturo Márquez (b. 1950). Like the ubiquitous No. 5 of Villa-Lobos’s nine Bachianas Brasileiras, this is by far the most familiar and frequently performed of Márquez’s nine Danzóne, and as with the Brazilian icon’s sequence, it’s regrettable that its popularity has masked what its companion pieces may offer.

That said, Danzón No. 2 instantly beguiled the ear, with its haunting and deceptively easy-going opening, a clarinet solo melody over light claves+piano+strings accompaniment which rapidly spreads through the rest of the orchestra and then twists, turns, and evolves over the next nine minutes or so through many changes of pace, dynamic, texture, and rhythm.

These are often abrupt and unexpected, reflecting the complex formalities of this Latin-American dance form (cf. the Wikipedia entry on Danzón), and one got the impression that Márquez’s work is far from being an easy piece to bring off, but the LBSO navigated it with skill, commitment, and minimal obvious gear-changes under Preu’s meticulous direction.

Michael Torke.

For anyone like me whose experience of bluegrass is confined to the dueling banjos scene in the movie Deliverance, the Wikipedia page on the genre is also pretty useful. Absent that, however, Maestro Preu’s pre-concert conversation with composer Michael Torke (b. 1961) and violinist Tessa Lark really gave all the background needed to enjoy the former’s violin concerto Sky (2018).

The composer emphasized that what the audience was going to hear was not bluegrass pure and simple, but a concerto inspired by and imbued with the bluegrass idiom, written specifically for Ms. Lark and inspired by her own Kentuckian origins and background, and involvement with bluegrass and Appalachian music.

Sky’s three movement titles eschew Italianate or Germanic formality. The first, headed Lively, leads off with nimble offbeat rhythms and banjo-picking technique transferred to the violin, with more than a hint of Irish jig to recall the region’s ethnic origins, and the whole extended and deepened by an aspiring, somewhat Coplandesque, wide-open-spaces motif that from time to time climbs through the orchestra. The slow second movement’s Irish sensibility exactly matches its title, Wistful, while the Spirited finale is jazzily airborne throughout.

Given that Sky is lightly scored for just double woodwind, four brass, minimal percussion, harp and strings, there’s nowhere for anyone to hide, and its success in performance crucially needs all concerned to be in sync with its idiom, and upon needle-sharp interactions between soloist, conductor, and orchestra, both individually and collectively.

Fortunately this was exactly what it got at Long Beach, with everyone on the platform clearly having a blast, as did the audience judging by the enthusiastic applause between the movements and standing ovation for Ms. Lark at the end.

It’s beginning to look as though Eckart Preu is building towards a complete Beethoven symphony cycle with his orchestra. If so, in this concert he reached the mid-point (though not in terms of the works’ chronological order) when having given the Eroica and Ninth in 2019, the Seventh in 2021, and the Fifth in 2022, he ended the program with the Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21.

This was an interesting, and indeed somewhat brave choice. There has been a tendency by commentators and critics rather to downplay the First Symphony (1799-1800) as a relatively modest precursor to the larger-scaled Second, which in turn is seen as a culmination of the Classical symphony before Beethoven blew the genre’s boundaries asunder with the Eroica. The great English musicologist Sir Donald Tovey called Symphony No. 1 a “comedy from beginning to end…” and it often forms the modest and shortish first half before the splendors of Beethoven's Ninth or a symphony by Bruckner or Mahler, or in a program trifecta along with, say a mid-period Haydn symphony and a Mozart piano concerto.

Miniature of Beethoven, painted in
1801 by Christian Hornemann.

Maestro Preu was having none of this. In his pre-concert talk he remarked how edgy and challenging the First can sound, the work of a supremely gifted and confident 30-year-old who was already the unquestioned pianistic conqueror of the Vienna salons, and now pushing his credentials onward and outward as a symphonic composer. And Tovey’s comment goes on that it “… is prophetic of changes in music no less profound than those which the French Revolution brought about in the social organism.”

With no trimming down from the Long Beach Symphony’s current full string strength of 14-12-10-8-6, and with every repeat observed, this was just about as “big” a performance of Beethoven’s symphonic debut as the score can take, but it stayed well on the right side of bombast and any sense of being overblown due to keen observance of its many sudden shifts in dynamic, characterful contributions from the full Classical band of double winds that Beethoven uses so extensively and resourcefully, and tempi that took no prisoners.

The first and last movements were close to Beethoven’s very fast metronome marks, challenging the large body of strings to articulate cleanly all that rapid figuration, and the nominal Menuetto became a trenchant scherzo under Maestro Preu’s energetic baton. Most illuminating of all, though, was the Andante cantabile, whose qualifying con moto was so keenly observed that the movement became a deliciously tripping promenade rather than the dullish trudge it can sometimes be.

Stuffy old purists might have winced when the virus of between-movement applause spread from the Torke to the Beethoven, but there was no doubt that the LBSO on top form deserved it, and the concluding enthusiasm from a remarkably full house was not something this particular symphony often gets. It’s good to see that in the 2025-2026 LBSO Classical season Maestro Preu’s Beethoven cycle will continue with the Pastoral, amongst his customary combination of the new and enterprising plus welcome familiarity. Looking forward!

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Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach, Saturday, February 1, 2025, 7.30 p.m.

Images: The performance: FERNVJR at FVPhotography; Arturo Márquez: Wikimedia Commons; Michael Torke: Bryan Hainer, c/o composer website; Beethoven: Beethovenhaus-Bonn.

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Morlot Celebrates 2025, Year of French Music in Seattle

Ludovic Morlot.

INTERVIEW: Ludovic Morlot

Seattle Symphony

ERICA MINER

On January 30, Seattle Symphony Conductor Emeritus Ludovic Morlot continues his Ravel celebration this season to mark the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth. The program begins with Gabriel Fauré’s engaging Suite from Pelléas et Mélisande and includes young up-and-coming French composer Benjamin Attahir’s Concerto for Piano & Harp for pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Principal Harp Valerie Muzzolini. A new Seattle Symphony Co-commission, the piece is inspired by Ravel’s sketches for Morgiane, an Arabian Nights ballet.

The second half of the program features two of Ravel most dazzling gems. First, the Introduction et Allegro for harp and strings, which originally was written to draw attention to new and innovative designs for the harp. As the finale, the orchestra performs Ravel’s beloved Mother Goose in its entirety, with all its vibrantly rendered, evocative fairytale scenes.

I interviewed Seattle’s favorite French maestro about his love for Ravel.

ERICA MINER: Maestro, tell us more about your ambitious French program for the Seattle Symphony celebrating the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth with two of his most beloved works.

Maurice Ravel.

LUDOVIC MORLOT: I’m embracing the anniversaries or birthday years that we do for composers. Earlier this season we did a piece by Boulez, Livre pour cordes (Book for Strings), for what would have been his 100th anniversary, and on the same program the Shostakovich Eighth Symphony. And of course 2025 being the big Ravel year, I insisted having with the Seattle Symphony this season some Ravel pieces in each of my programs. So we did the Concerto for the Left Hand, also on that fall program. And I will do his Ma mère l’oye and Introduction et Allegro, which I haven’t done with them yet.

EM: What a gorgeous program. I’m sure the Seattle audiences will embrace it wholeheartedly.

Gabriel Fauré, by
John Singer Sargent.

LM: It’s also a Fauré anniversary this season, whose music we don’t program enough. Harmonically his music is fantastic. Pelléas et Mélisande we are happy to revisit, but it will remind me of the Fauré pieces we did early in my Seattle tenure. Then for this weekend’s program I commissioned a new Concerto for Piano and Harp. There’s very little written for those two instruments, and I thought in that context it would be interesting to see what a French composer would do with that combination. 

I challenged Benjamin Attahir, a wonderful young French composer, to write a piece for Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Symphony harpist Valerie Muzzolini. It’s subtitled Hanoï Songs, as in Vietnam, but scored in a Ravelian way. I’m really curious about this because Attahir is a composer I admire a lot. He wrote something quite beautiful, I think. Later on I will appear here with Boléro and Rapsodie Espagnole. Every program with Seattle Symphony this year I wanted some Ravel.

EM: It is a very big anniversary, very exciting. I was curious about Attahir but found very little information, except that he’s only 35 years old.

Benjamin Attahir.

LM: He is indeed very young. His music has been played mostly in France, a bit in Germany, but not really performed in the States. I wanted to give him a little push to America. He really deserves it. Beautiful craft.

Of course when you commission a piece you never know what you’ll get, but I had faith he would come up with something interesting. I had wanted to do this for Jean-Yves and Valerie a while ago. They are my good friends. I hope the piece can travel to Europe after that.

EM: I’m sure Attahir will be up to the challenge.

LM: Yes. I look forward to it very much.

EM: What is the piece like?

LM: It’s really gorgeous. Beautiful. I’ve actually worked on it with Jean-Yves recently. Eight movements, little songs, that start with a simple melody and open up to a colorful orchestration. I will fully realize the wealth of colors once I’m in front of the orchestra. A lot of percussion in the mix, creating a bridge between the harp and the piano. It will be very original in the sound world.

EM: As usual, your programs are so innovative and creative and diverse.

LM: Thank you.

EM: I feel so lucky to see you perform twice with glorious music in two different venues in less than a month: both the Symphony and Les Troyens at Seattle Opera. Speaking of which, I saw your wonderful recent interview on YouTube with Fondation Maurice Ravel. You mentioned Ravel’s captivating two one-act operas, L’enfant et les Sortilèges and L’Heure Espagnole, both of which I adore. Do you have any plans to perform them in the future?

LM: I’m performing them in Spain next year for sure, in Barcelona, because we will be performing and recording them: L’Heure Espagnole at the end of this season, in June; L’enfant et les Sortilèges next year in June. I’ve cast these and we will be doing them in the same 10 days, performances and recording, as part of our complete Ravel recording project in Barcelona. I did L’enfant in a concert version in Seattle when I was there.

EM: I remember. It was absolutely luminous.

LM: But not L’Heure Espagnole, which I think they would play wonderfully in Barcelona. I think L’Heure Espagnole could benefit from staging more than L’enfant, so that may be an idea for Seattle Opera as a double bill. I remember assisting Seiji Ozawa in a double bill of L’enfant and L’Heure Espagnole at Tanglewood when I was a fellow. He always liked to pair L’Heure Espagnole with Gianni Schicchi, which I think works very well.

EM: Brilliant idea. They work together perfectly.

LM: I think so, yes.

EM: I imagine they’d go absolutely wild over L’Heure Espagnole in Barcelona.

LM: I hope so [Laughs].

EM: And I hope you will bring them both to Seattle sometime soon.

LM: Let’s hope so!

---ooo---

Morlot and the Seattle Symphony will perform their Ravel’s Mother Goose program Jan. 30-Feb. 1 at Benaroya Hall.

Images: Ludovic Morlot: Lisa Marie Mazzucco; Ravel, Fauré: Wikimedia Commons; Benjamin Attahir: Durand Salabert Eschig.

Alpine and Seasonal Splendors from the Pacific Symphony

Carl St. Clair and the Pacific Symphony perform Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony with
visuals by Tobias Melle.

REVIEW

Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Costa Mesa

DAVID J BROWN

A set of Italian Baroque string concerti and a gargantuan Late Romantic symphonic poem hardly seem the likeliest of program bedfellows but, as noted by Pacific Symphony Music Director Carl St. Clair (right) in some introductory remarks before this, the orchestra’s first concert of 2025, what Vivaldi’s Le quattro stagioni Op. 8, Nos. 1-4 and Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie, Op. 64, TrV 233, have in common is that both are concerned with time passing, its effects, and its significance.

Maestro St. Clair’s comments were particularly heartfelt because this occasion had a special element of memorialization: the evening was dedicated in honor of one of the Pacific Symphony’s most generous benefactors, the late Ellie Gordon. And, in view of the tragic wildfires being battled north of Los Angeles, St. Clair also extended the symbolic healing power of music to the countless numbers affected by them, and their heroic first responders.

Mike and Ellie Gordon.

One of Ellie Gordon’s enduring legacies to the orchestra had been her commitment more than 20 years ago with her husband Mike to underwrite in perpetuity the concertmaster’s chair, and appropriately Carl St. Clair then ceded the Segerstrom Hall platform to the chair’s present incumbent, Dennis Kim, to lead members of the string sections (six each of 1st and 2nd violins, four violas, two cellos and one double bass, together with harpsichord continuo) in The Four Seasons. 

Having all the upper string players standing, instead of being seated as normal, and spaced well apart—with the 1st and 2nd violins divided left and right—gave not only transparency but also an air of improvisatory urgency to the performance, and as Kim and his companions swung into the opening Allegro of Spring (Concerto in E major, Op. 8, No. 1, RV 269 “La Primavera”) it was immediately clear that this was going to be a thoroughly collaborative account, with Kim playing and responding to his colleagues as a first amongst equals, rather than any sense of a star soloist backed by an orchestra.

Engraving of Antonio Vivaldi from the
1725 publication of his 12 Op. 8 concerti,
which begins with The Four Seasons.

Vivaldi’s superscription over that Allegro opening—Giunt’ è la primavera (Spring is here)— leaves no room for ambiguity, and throughout all 12 movements of the four concertos there’s barely a page where he doesn’t tell you exactly what he is depicting. True, you might have trouble guessing some without a textual prompt—e. g. “the barking dog” at the beginning of the central Largo of Spring—but here viola section Principal Meredith Crawford’s attack at Vivaldi’s instruction Si deve suonare sempre molto forte e strappato (You must always play very loud and tight) left no doubt that sooner or later the dog was going to wake the "sleeping goatherd" pictured in Kim’s gently drooping solo violin line.

From well back in such a large hall it was perhaps inevitable that little could be heard of the harpsichord continuo. However, Hye-Young Kim and her instrument—a strikingly lime-green painted modern one copying the casing of one 18th century original in Edinburgh and the soundboard of another in Paris—did have their moment in the sun in the Adagio second movement of Autumn (Concerto in F major, Op. 8, No. 3, RV 2939 “L 'Autunno”), providing delicate arpeggiated accompaniment to the “dozing drunkards” represented by the upper strings.

To my ears, this vigorous, sensitive account of Vivaldi’s Seasons was just about ideally poised between the slightly careful interpretations sometimes encountered in decades past and the exaggerated pivoting between manic aggression and near-catatonia that some modern groups impose on this very familiar music—in order, perhaps, for it to sound “challenging” and shake listeners out of their comfort zone. Vivaldi certainly doesn’t need that, and the Segerstrom Hall audience, comfort zone or not, obviously loved what they heard.

Vivaldi’s detailed program clearly lends itself to visual accompaniment, and the German photographer Tobias Melle has indeed applied his great talent for selecting appropriate imagery to The Four Seasons. On this occasion, however, the big screen above the platform was filled only with the usual well-directed simulcast of the players, with Melle’s special treatment being reserved for the Alpine Symphony after the interval.

Richard Strauss in 1912, while 
working on the Alpine Symphony.

This last of Richard Strauss’s tone-poems, completed in 1915, used rather to be disparaged against some of its predecessors, and appeared relatively rarely in concert programs compared to Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, and even Also Sprach Zarathustra—once that had been catapulted into general awareness by 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, however, the Alpine seems almost to have become a repertoire staple, and quite rightly, given its plethora of memorable themes, sumptuous sound-world, and overall design as grandly simple as its detailed layout is elaborate.

Some of the labels for Strauss’s 22-section program tend to conjure images of lederhosen-clad, feather-hatted Bavarians with walking sticks earnestly striding up to the summit through the various landmarks and stages that he delineates, and then battling the mists and thunderstorm on the way down, but apart from one scene (cowbells, cows, and herdsman) Melle’s photography is all of unpeopled visions of nature, beginning with the full moon hovering over pre-dawn Nacht.

With the scale of his subjects ranging from bedewed strands of spiderweb to distant rocky peaks, as well as the careful choice of slow dissolves and occasional lightening or darkening of particular shots, plus hardly any use of panning until the sweeping vista with which he illustrates consummately section 13 Auf dem Gipfel (On the Summit), Melle’s selection so perfectly blended with the music that one soon became unaware of them as two separate entities but simply reveled in the marvelous fusion of sound and vision.

As a performance per se, Maestro St. Clair and his great orchestra delivered an experience that would be hard for any others, however illustrious, to exceed or even match. Taken literally, Strauss’s score specifies some 125 players; while his quadruple woodwinds are surpassed in number by several of Mahler’s symphonies, the brass complement exceeds any of the latter’s demands, totaling a budget-busting 34 players. But of these, 12 horns and pairs each of trumpets and trombones only play briefly offstage during section 3 Der Anstieg (The Ascent), signaling a distant hunting party. Some discreet nipping off of the platform and then afterwards back on by some players ensured that this passage distantly resounded as required, and with definite gains in economy.

The program listed the Alpine Symphony’s approximate duration as 47 minutes—a trifle on the quick side, as most performances come in at some 50 minutes. St. Clair’s took no less than 57 minutes, not due to any sluggish treatment of the fast music, but because of his lovingly applied rubati, particularly in the four sections leading up to No. 19, Gewitter und Sturm, Abstieg (Thunderstorm and Tempest, Descent). That this nowhere seemed perilously overdrawn was due to the sheer sustained beauty and eloquence of the playing.

Throughout, indeed, the Pacific Symphony covered themselves in glory, from the soft, rich darkness of low woodwind and multi-divided strings in the opening Nacht, to the numerous solo winds that Strauss uses to illustrate local passing beauties of his scenes, to the massed grandeur of the eight (onstage) horns crowning the summit, to the percussion onslaught complete with thunder sheet and wind machine in the Sturm, to the organ—hitherto employed to add even more weight and tone color to the biggest climaxes, but coming into its own in noble solitude at the opening of No. 21 Ausklang (Quiet settles / Epilogue).

Carl St. Clair & Tobias Melle.

When, beneath the solitary glow of Melle’s full moon signifying the return of night, Maestro St Clair drew the final cadence down to its ppp conclusion, the dark sonorities enriched by the tenor tubas with which four of the horn players alternated, the surprise was that this tremendous performance was not greeted by the expected wholehearted ovation, with too many of the audience heading immediately for the exits. 

Awed by the grandeur of nature? Out of their comfort zone? Who knows? Certainly it deserved to be cheered to the rafters, and it was heartening to see many members of the orchestra applauding their 35-years’-standing Music Director, with whom they cannot have had many grander or more successful collaborations. 

---ooo---

Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Costa Mesa, Thursday January 9, 2025, 8 p.m.

Images: The performance: Doug Gifford; Carl St. Clair, Mike and Ellie Gordon: Pacific Symphony; Vivaldi: Wikimedia Commons; Richard Strauss: www.richardstrauss.at.

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Morlot Helms Seattle Opera’s First "Les Troyens"

Ludovic Morlot.

INTERVIEW: Ludovic Morlot

Seattle Opera

ERICA MINER

Following his triumph in Seattle Opera’s celebrated Samson and Delilah in Concert in 2023, Seattle Symphony Conductor Emeritus Ludovic Morlot will helm an unprecedented operatic event in January 2025: the SO premiere of Les Troyens in Concert, a rarely performed abridged version of Hector Berlioz’s epic masterpiece, Les Troyens à Carthage. The SO adaptation, Part 2 of Berlioz’s monumental opera, Les Troyens, the pinnacle of the composer’s life work, begins with the arrival of the great warrior Aeneas at Carthage and ends with the tragic immolation of Queen Dido.

Morlot, who originates from a region close to Berlioz’s birthplace in France, has been recognized for his distinguished interpretations of the composer’s music, both as music director of the Seattle Symphony and in his acclaimed 2018 Seattle Opera debut, Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict. The high-powered cast in Les Troyens in Concert includes two operatic superstars: mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, who sang Delilah in 2023’s Samson and Delilah in Concert, as Queen Dido; and formidable tenor and former Seattle Opera Young Artist participant Russell Thomas, as Aeneas.

ERICA MINER: Welcome back as always, Maestro! This is an especially exhilarating and unprecedented occasion for all of us: Les Troyens for the first time at Seattle Opera.

LUDOVIC MORLOT: Thank you! I’m always happy to talk about Berlioz!

Berlioz in 1863: photo by Pierre Petit.

EM: After your huge success with Samson and Delilah, we are thrilled to see you helm another French masterpiece. It must be a defining moment for you.

LM: It doesn’t come often that you have this opportunity. It’s so special that it’s an orchestra (Seattle Symphony) I know so well, in music we have explored together. Though I haven’t conducted Troyens with them, we have done Damnation of Faust, Roméo et Juliette, L’enfance du Christ. It’s only natural to do this piece for the first time with an orchestra that I’ve built a relationship with and with this music. We recorded the Requiem, and some of the early cantatas from the Prix de Rome and Les nuits d’été. It’s a vocabulary I’ve always been fond of. I always felt Berlioz was a composer I wanted to champion. Not only his music but his personality, his life. 

I’ve been reading as much of his writings as his music. His Mémoires, of course, over and over again, but also all those Journals des débats, the Grotesques de la musique, evenings with the orchestra. It’s easy now to say, but I don’t think music would have moved so fast after Beethoven if it weren’t for people like Liszt, Schumann, and Berlioz, who was really, if not a revolutionary, at least someone who was pushing boundaries. I feel close to this voice for sure. To be able to study this opera for some time now has been a gift, really.

EM: As it was a gift for me to play it when I was at the Met. All six hours.

Poster for the premiere of Les Troyens at the
Théâtre Lyrique, Paris, on 4 November 1863.

LM: Yes! But I think it works well to split it in halves like this. Les Troyens à Carthage somehow is its own thing. We’re adding the Prologue, which Berlioz suggested to add if you were to perform Part 2 only.* We made a few cuts, because I think without the stage some of the ballet is a little redundant. Of course, always thinking about economy, trying to cut some of the numbers, and characters that would only appear for one number. 

But generally speaking if you read about the premiere in 1863, and even the subsequent performances, he was forced to cut so much. It’s only recently that the full thing has been able to come to life. He even had to cut the storm [Laughs] in the second performance! I think I read that it took them 55 minutes to change the scenery after the storm, so he decided the next night not to have it in the opera. I think Berlioz would not have been shocked to see that opera houses today have to do a bit of cutting as well.

EM: Having only played the epic in its entirety at the Met, I’m really curious to hear more about how you went about abridging the piece.

LM: It’s two different operas in a way: La Prise de Troie and Troyens à Carthage. The big Cassandra first half with the big Dido second half feels to me that Les Troyens can be defined as two very different pieces. It’s based as you know on the Aeneid but two very specific books: two and four of Virgil with references all the time to all the other books. It’s Shakespearean in nature as well. The big love duet is actually words from The Merchant of Venice. Berlioz was constantly aware of those very big authors like Virgil and Shakespeare and so fond of them that he was rereading them constantly. He almost references them without really thinking about it. It was also interesting for me to explore all the cantatas he wrote for the Prix de Rome. He applied for it four or five times. Pieces like La Mort d’Orphée or Herminie or Cléopâtre of course. It’s incredible because Death of Cléopâtre is exactly the same music you find thirty-some years later as Didon’s death. Énée’s big aria is already in Mort d’Orphée twenty-some years earlier. 

Troyens is the accomplishment of a whole life for Berlioz, not only dramatically but also musically. You can see he’s maybe not consciously completely reusing that material from earlier, but it’s there. Like Herminie was the sketch for the Symphonie Fantastique. It’s very clear. There are moments when I find there is a bit of an idée fixe running through Troyens as well. So we really are talking about a Wagnerian kind of figure, or Debussy, where everything is connected from the first note he wrote as a young boy in his village of La Côte Saint-André to that piece he didn’t even get to see performed in its entirety in his lifetime.

EM: That’s a shame but not surprising, given the scope of it. But his ties to Shakespeare were hugely significant. He himself wrote of combining his love of Virgil with “a great opera, designed on Shakespearean lines,” which I believe he accomplished in Les Troyens.

LM: Absolutely. All the way. Also his love for ancient literature, Greek and Roman heroes, is something that comes from having explored this as a young man. Having to write on a very specific topic for the Prix de Rome. I’m completely convinced of that. Also coming from his education, his father of course, but they were reading Virgil around the dinner table [Laughs]. And he fell in love with the actress, Harriet Smithson, who was the Shakespearean actress of the time and became his wife for a brief period. His whole life was swimming in that aesthetic.

J'Nai Bridges.

EM: Let’s go back to your Troyens performances. Have you started working with J’Nai Bridges and Russell Thomas in the fiendishly difficult leading roles of Dido and Aeneas?

LM: Not yet. We start on Sunday (Jan. 12). J’Nai of course was my Delilah not too long ago in the Saint-Saëns Samson. Russell Thomas I haven’t worked with, but he’s the perfect voice for a character like Énée. I worked with Panthée (Andrew Potter) in the Saint-Saëns production. Seattle Opera is always faithful to that family of singers and brings out the best from everybody in their casting. I think it will be very interesting to have J’Nai and Russell in their debuts of those two big roles.

EM: I heard Russell sing Roberto Devereux in San Francisco and was struck not just by the beauty of his voice but also the power and sensitivity combined with it.

Russell Thomas.

LM: I look forward to it. There’s a bit of staging happening, but it’s also one of those operas where the chorus is so important. That is something else in Berlioz that is so unusual. In Verdi, the chorus tells you the story. Here the chorus is showing the emotion. The chorus participation in this opera is as intense as the quasi-oratorio of Samson et Dalila. It’s very unique in that sense.

We’ll have rather small forces in this music, but I would say better to do it that way than not do it at all. Of course I wish we could be giving Berlioz what he asked for: a 300-piece chorus, six to eight harps, etc., and all the Bandas, which will be integrated into the brass parts in the orchestra onstage because we couldn’t possibly hire all those extra brass musicians (offstage).

EM: Will any of the ballet music be included?

LM: Yes, a bit: the Danse des Esclaves, in the abridged version without repeats, but that’s about it. Most of these would make no sense at all without the context of the ballet onstage. Some ends of numbers have been abridged. They actually were lengthened by Berlioz to allow more time for the scene change. As we don’t really require this, we came up with an abridged version. Most of the other music, les laboureurs, all those kinds of ballets, it doesn’t make sense if you don’t have dancers onstage. It will not take anything away from the genius of Berlioz.

EM: If you’re going to include one ballet, Esclaves is the one.

LM: Absolutely. Hopefully it could be an inspiration for Seattle Opera—any opera house, for that matter—to have the ambition to stage this opera at some point. It would be an introduction to the audience in Seattle also because it’s not music they would have had the chance to experience locally.

EM: Hopefully someday. Meanwhile, I have no doubt your Troyens à Carthage will be magnificent.

LM: I hope we have enough time. This is not such straightforward music to put together. Time is the enemy for us, always.

EM: But I have faith you will make the most of it, and I thank you for providing us with an insider view of this rare concert version of Les Troyens.

LM: It’s a pleasure.

EM: I wish you toi, toi, for what I’m sure will be a splendid success.

LM: Thank you. 

---ooo---

Les Troyens in Concert will be performed on January 17 and 19 at McCaw Hall, Seattle.

*(“For this production a prologue was composed by Berlioz in June 1863 to summarize the action before…” —The Hector Berlioz website)

Image credits: Ludovic Morlot: Lisa Marie Mazzucco; Berlioz and Les Troyens poster: Wikimedia Commons; J'Nai Bridges: Todd Rosenberg; Russell Thomas: Fay Fox.