Fewer that 2300 people were able to attend last October’s Los Angeles Philharmonic Centennial Concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall. But now everyone can see this once-in-a-lifetime concert as Great Performances on PBS will air the complete concert on May 8th. (As with all PBS programs, best to check your local listings.)
There was not just one conductor for this concert, but rather three: Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Gustavo Dudamel.
Salonen went first in the centennial concert leading the orchestra in a performance of Lutoslawski’s Symphony No. 4, a work commissioned by the LA Phil that had its world premiere in 1993. Though Lutoslawski conducted that performance, Salonen recorded the symphony with the orchestra a year later.
Mehta was next with performances of Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Ravel’s La valse. Of the three conductors, Mehta is the only one who also conducted the orchestra at its first home on Olive and 5th in downtown Los Angeles.
Dudamel followed with a performance of the 1919 version of Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite.
What happened next has to be seen to be believed. Composer Daníel Bjarnason’s From Space I Saw Earth, a world premiere and LA Philharmonic commission, was performed. Bjarnason wrote the work to be conducted by all three conductors at the same time specifically for this centennial concert.
When I spoke with the composer last year just before he started rehearsals with Salonen, Mehta and Dudamel he told me how he solved the challenge of writing a work for three conductors:
“In the end I found a solution with what I have been doing with my music for awhile anyway, which is having the same material, but slightly shifted apart from each other and moving at different speeds. This can be on a big scale or a smaller scale to create the effect of reverb or delay, but it can also be an interesting thing harmonically to do. There’s an element of randomness so it will never be the same twice. I like that aspect of it.”
In Mark Swed’s review of the concert in the Los Angeles Times he wrote, “For 15 minutes, the L.A. Phil was no longer the orchestra of any one of them, but of something larger. The last word (or sound), moreover, belonged to neither the orchestra nor the conductors, to not a charmed past, but to the hope for a charmed future.”
If you are unable to watch Great Performances, a Blu-ray and DVD is available that includes a 52-minute documentary called LA Phil: The Tradition of the New.
Photo from the Centennial Concert courtesy of Craig T. Mathew and Greg Gurdt/Mathew Imaging
Fine playing and conducting by L.A. Philhamonic and Dudamel. Then “From space i saw earth” by Bjarnason with three conductors.
Where can I see a recording of the concert?
It was previously available on Great Performances. I don’t have any details where it can be streamed now. There is a DVD available for purchase.