Classical Music

An Icon Turns 10

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

disneyconcerthall

 

The wonderfully designed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California, turns 10 years old this year. With its sweeping, idiosyncratic curves. metallic finish and public spaces, it is doing a lot (at least in LA terms) to revitalise the downtown area.

The interior is also beautifully designed, with seating in the round (limited audience seating behind the choir) and a very dramatic organ placement. The warm finish of the interior contrasts strikingly with the bright, metallic exterior.

disneyconcerthall2

Gramophone Magazine reports:

The Los Angeles Philharmonic is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its Walt Disney Concert Hall with ‘insideOUT’, a number of special events taking place during September, October and November featuring music director Gustavo Dudamel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Yo-Yo Ma, Leif Ove Andsnes, Yefim Bronfman and Julie Andrews.

There will also be public forums with Frank Gehry, designer of the concert hall (Oct 2, 15), who writes of his building: ‘One of the primary considerations when conceiving the design for Walt Disney Concert Hall was to preserve the iconic importance of the LA Phil, but break down the often imposing scale of a traditional concert hall. Walt Disney Concert Hall is not just a building for music, but a building for the people. From the inside out, the building was designed to respond to its surrounding, and serve as a gathering place.’

Semi-Partisan Sam hopes to make his own visit to the Disney Concert Hall in the coming few years.

Music For The Day

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The Passacaglia from Violin Concerto no. 1 by Dmitri Shostakovich, performed here by Hilary Hahn:

 

Hilary Hahn has long been one of my favourite violinists, since she came to my attention with her recording of Bernstein’s “Serenade” for violin and string orchestra. Hers is a very pristine, clean style of playing, but it never lapses into mere dry technical mastery of her instrument.

If anything, her somewhat reserved and understated style serves to add greater profundity to much of the music that she plays – no more so than in the case of this Shostakovich violin concerto, where she draws out the full impact of the composer’s spine-tingling, chilling, yearning melody in the Passacaglia.

Music For The Day

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“The Fairy Garden” from Mother Goose Suite by Maurice Ravel (1910), performed here by the Scott Brothers duo in the original piano duet arrangement:

 

I had not previously encountered this duo, but the Scott Brothers’ official biography on their website states:

International Piano Magazine said of ‘Duets for Piano’ “I doubt whether Debussy’s Petite Suite or Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye have ever sounded more beguiling on disc.”

I am also new to this particular arrangement of “Ma Mère L’oye”, having heard it for the first time as an encore to yesterday’s BBC Prom concert, performed by acclaimed pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and the conductor Philippe Jordan taking the other hot seat.

The piece has many of the hallmarks that characterise so much of Ravel’s writing for piano – beautiful melodies; clean, sparse and somewhat melancholy chords; and a wonderful sparkling sound that always conjures in my mind an image of crystal clear water in a bubbling brook.

 

And above is the orchestral version, performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Charles Munch.

Yet another example of why Maurice Ravel remains the most gifted orchestrator ever to have lived.

Music For The Day, Ctd.

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The day cannot pass without mention of today’s excellent Google Doodle – an animated nighttime street scene, set to the music “Claire de Lune” by Claude Debussy:

 

A nice effort, very well made.