The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra continues its first season under new Music Director Jaime MartÃn with concerts where Russian composers Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev are the centerpieces. The concerts take place on Saturday at the Alex Theatre in Glendale and Sunday at Royce Hall at UCLA.
The program opens with Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin. The work was written as a piano suite and had its world premiere in 1919. A year later the orchestrated version had its debut with two movements omitted. Over the years many people have orchestrated this work with some of those versions completed just a few years ago.
The highlight of the program for me is the West Coast Premiere of Dark with Excessive Bright by composer-in-residence Missy Mazzoli. The work is a double bass concerto that was commissioned by Bruce and Jenny Lane for the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
The work was inspired by the actual instrument played by Maxime Bibeau, an instrument that was made in 1580. In composer notes on the ACO website, Mazzoli says of the work, ” “‘Dark with excessive bright,’ a phrase from Milton’s Paradise Lost, is a surreal and evocative description of God, written by a blind man. I love the impossibility of this phrase, and felt it was a strangely accurate way to describe the dark but heartrending sound of the double bass itself.”
David Grossman, a member of the New York Philharmonic, will be the soloist. When he joined the NY Phil in 2000 he was the youngest artist to ever join the orchestra.
LACO’s program continues with the Russians. Pulcinella Suite by Stravinsky is next. The music was written for a ballet that had its premiere in 1920. The composer reworked the composition in 1965. This is a work that sounds more in the traditional classical music realm that Stravinsky’s later compositions like The Rite of Spring.
The concerts will conclude with Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 nicknamed “Classical.” Prokofiev began work on the symphony in 1916 with the world premiere taking place in 1918. Prokofiev conducted that world premiere.
This is a short, four-movement, symphony typical runs only 12-14 minutes (depending on the choices made by the conductor.) Like Pulcinella Suite, this first symphony gives just a few hints as to the work Prokofiev would later compose.
For tickets at the Alex Theatre go here.
For tickets at Royce Hall go here.
Photo of Missy Mazzoli by Marylene Mey (Courtesy of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra)