LA Phil: Inside the Music: Recent Episodes
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Get more than ever from your LA Phil concert experience when you dive into the music with your host, KUSC’s Brian Lauritzen, whose informative podcasts provide a deeper look at our concert programming and performances thereof. For more info, visit laphil.com/insidethemusic.
Stravinsky's earth-shattering "Rite of Spring" is a musical work inextricably linked to the history of the LA Phil. In fact, the orchestra's 1928 rehearsal of the piece at the Hollywood Bowl marked the first-ever recording of the iconic work.
About This Performance:
Following Stravinsky’s early memorial for his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov (lost until recently!), Salonen leads two of Stravinsky’s ritualistic ballet scores, concluding with Salonen’s crackling specialty and signature work with the LA Phil, The Rite of Spring.
Program:
STRAVINSKY: Funeral Song
STRAVINSKY: Agon
STRAVINSKY: The Rite of Spring
Artists:
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Esa-Pekka Salonen conductor
APR 12–13, 2019 – 8:00PM
Upcoming concerts: www.laphil.com/calendar
Inside the Music schedule, details, and videos: www.laphil.com/insidethemusic
The composer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon creates another stunning, evening-length oratorio.
About this Performance:
Following on the stunning success of his Water Passion after St. Matthew, Tan Dun (composer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) has created another evening-length oratorio, this time based on stories inspired by the Dunhuang Cave paintings.
Program:
Tan DUN: Buddha Passion (U.S. premiere, LA Phil commission*)
Artists:
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Gustavo Dudamel conductor
Sen Guo soprano
Huiling Zhu mezzo-soprano
Kang Wang tenor
Shenyang bass-baritone
Tan Weiwei Female Indigenous Singer
Batubagen Male Indigenous Singer
Chen Yining Fantan Pipa Soloist and Dancer
Los Angeles Master Chorale
Grant Gershon Artistic Director
Los Angeles Children’s Chorus
Fernando Malvar-Ruiz Artistic Director
FRI / FEB 8, 2019 - 8:00PM
Upcoming concerts: www.laphil.com/calendar
Inside the Music schedule, details, and videos: www.laphil.com/insidethemusic
It’s a night of passionate music as Michael Tilson Thomas teams up with the LA Phil.
About this Performance:
L.A.’s own Michael Tilson Thomas partners with the orchestra for his own latest work, followed by the passionate emotional depths of Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique.”
Program:Michael TILSON THOMAS: Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind
Intermission TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 6, "Pathétique"
Artists:
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Michael Tilson Thomas conductor
Measha Brueggergosman mezzo-soprano
FRI / NOV 30, 2019 - 8:00PM
Upcoming concerts: www.laphil.com/calendar
Inside the Music schedule, details, and videos: www.laphil.com/insidethemusic
Dudamel teams with iconic director Peter Sellars and innovative video artist Refik Anadol for the poignant and rarely performed oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri.
About this Performance:
Although his life was difficult, to say the least, ending prematurely in madness, Robert Schumann nonetheless composed music that elevates us through its pure spirit and unique personal character. Over three weekends, Gustavo Dudamel delves deeply into Schumann’s four symphonies, two greatest concertos, and a rarely heard oratorio, offering us a portrait of the man through his finest creations.
The oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri (Paradise and the Peri) is seen as one of Schumann’s major achievements; even Wagner had positive words for it. The story, which originated with 19th-century Irish poet/singer Thomas Moore, was translated by Schumann and a friend. It tells of a peri – a fairy-like spirit from Persian mythology, somewhere between an angel and a devil – who has been cast out of heaven. Its only way back is by finding the gift that God will like best, which – spoiler alert! – turns out to be a tear from a repentant old sinner who has observed a child praying.
For our production, incomparable operatic mastermind Peter Sellars teams with media artist Refik Anadol to create a never-before-seen staging, bringing the season to a moving conclusion.
Program:SCHUMANN: Das Paradies und die Peri, Op. 50 (Part One, Part Two)
Our Conductor Laureate revisits the piece he composed for the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall alongside music of Beethoven and Mozart.
About this Performance:The second program celebrating our Conductor Laureate as a composer concludes with the latest edition of his Wing on Wing, the piece he wrote for the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall. Inspired by Frank Gehry’s sailing imagery – also the source of his title – Salonen takes full advantage of the orchestra and the Hall’s brilliant acoustics, such as placing sopranos across from each other in the Orchestra East and West sections of the audience. It’s a celebration in sound of a long-held dream come true.
Launching this marvelous program is young Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang, whose profound musicianship and unassailable virtuosity have already established her throughout Europe as a leading light in the music world. She makes her much-anticipated LA Phil debut performing Beethoven’s towering Violin Concerto, a masterpiece of noble lyricism, which set the bar for all such works to come.
Program:BEETHOVEN: Violin Concerto
MOZART: The Impresario, K. 486
Esa-Pekka SALONEN: Wing on Wing
Artists:
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Esa-Pekka Salonen conductor
Vilde Frang violin
Hila Plitmann soprano
So Young Park soprano
Joshua Dennis tenor
Christopher Job bass-baritone
FRI / FEB 16, 2018 - 8:00PM
Upcoming concerts: www.laphil.com/calendar
Inside the Music schedule, details, and videos: www.laphil.com/insidethemusic
Our Principal Guest Conductor builds powerful momentum – with help from Tero Saarinen’s dance company.
About this Performance:
Principal Guest Conductor Susanna Mälkki cuts across a vast range of German music, featuring our brilliant Principal Cellist in Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s highly colorful and uniquely creative concerto from 1966, complete with dancers. The massive orchestra Strauss requires for his Alpine climb creates imposing force.
Program:Johann Sebastian Bach (arr. Webern): Ricercar
Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Concerto for cello and orchestra, en forme de pas de trois (U.S. premiere)
STRAUSS: An Alpine Symphony
Artists:
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Susanna Mälkki conductor
Robert deMaine cello
Tero Saarinen Company
FRI / JAN 19, 2018 - 8:00PM
Upcoming concerts: www.laphil.com/calendar
Inside the Music schedule, details, and videos: www.laphil.com/insidethemusic
Dudamel soars as he conducts selections from Mozart’s enchanted opera.
About this Performance:
For his second week focused on Mozart’s final year, Dudamel leads the gorgeous Clarinet Concerto – featuring one of the world’s greatest clarinet soloists – and highlights from the enchanted opera The Magic Flute. Both works were premiered shortly before Mozart’s untimely death.
Program:MOZART : Clarinet Concerto, K. 622
MOZART : Selections from The Magic Flute, K. 620
Artists:
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Gustavo Dudamel conductor
Martin Fröst clarinet
Julia Bullock Pamina
Paul Appleby Tamino
Elliot Madore Papageno
Jessica Pratt Queen of the Night
FRI / OCT 6, 2017 - 8:00PM
Upcoming concerts: www.laphil.com/calendar
Inside the Music schedule, details, and videos: www.laphil.com/insidethemusic
About this Performance:
Dudamel launches an utterly fascinating and inspired survey combining all of Schubert’s symphonies with orchestral songs by Mahler, emphasizing the deep connection between these Viennese masters who bookend the Romantic era.
Having absorbed the marvels of Mozart’s and Haydn’s Classicism at the hands of Salieri, the 16-year-old Franz Schubert took a major step forward in his development by completing his First Symphony, which begins with a regal adagio. Two years later, he completed No. 2, extending himself further with extensive modulations and astonishing harmonic shifts, which became his hallmark.
Combined with early Schubert is early Mahler, though the latter was already in his mid-20s. Following an unhappy love for a soprano with whom he had worked, Mahler produced four songs overflowing with a young man’s heartache. Using his own texts, he composed them first for voice and piano, later orchestrating and revising them.
Two of the four became very important material for his First Symphony. The best known and most frequently performed of Mahler’s early compositions, it will be sung by one of the world’s most exciting mezzo-sopranos, Colorado-born Michelle DeYoung, who graduated from California State University, Northridge.
Program:
SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 1 (c. 32 minutes)
MAHLER: Songs of a Wayfarer (c. 16 minutes)
SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 2 (c. 29 minutes)
Artists:
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor
Michelle DeYoung, mezzo-soprano**
Upcoming concerts: www.laphil.com/calendar
Inside the Music schedule, details, and videos: www.laphil.com/insidethemusic
About this Performance:Prolific Scottish composer James MacMillan, who writes complex yet approachable, spiritually centered music, has built a concerto/tone poem on the five Luminous Mysteries, the most recently added section of the Catholic practice of praying the Rosary. He composed the work specifically for Thibaudet, who plays it here.
French conductor Stéphane Denève concludes the program with two works from his homeland, the first of which is the luscious and often delicate suite that Gabriel Fauré created from his incidental music for Maurice Maeterlinck’s tragic Symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande, the same play that Debussy used for his groundbreaking opera. Finally comes Debussy’s symphonic poem depicting the sea, an orchestral landmark of French Impressionism.
Program:BRITTEN: Passacaglia from Peter Grimes (c. 16 minutes)
James MACMILLAN: Piano Concerto No. 3, The Mysteries of Light (c. 25 minutes)
Intermission
FAURÉ: Suite from Pelléas and Mélisande (c. 18 minutes)
DEBUSSY: La mer (c. 25 minutes)
Artists:
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Stéphane Denève, conductor
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano**
Upcoming concerts: www.laphil.com/calendar
Inside the Music schedule, details, and videos: www.laphil.com/insidethemusic
About this Performance:Composer/pianist/conductor Thomas Adès crowns a provocative program with his macabre “dance of death” for two singers and orchestra, “his longest, most ambitious and most astounding orchestral composition yet.” (The New York Times)
Totentanz has its origins in a 15th-century German frieze (destroyed in WWII) depicting death as a skeleton who dances a series of people, from the most exalted to the most innocent, to their ultimate fate. In addition to the images, the frieze included a poem describing this morbid dance, and those words became the text that Adès set for mezzo-soprano and baritone, the latter always giving voice to the Grim Reaper. This ambitious work gives us “a glimpse of the future of symphonic music,” according to New York magazine.
For this evening, Adès as conductor has programmed two works that refer to death, as well as his 2009 cello work Lieux retrouvés, with a new orchestral accompaniment.
Program:SIBELIUS: The Bard (c. 6 minutes)
SAINT-SAËNS: Danse macabre (c. 8 minutes)
ADÈS: Lieux Retrouvés (U.S. premiere, LA Phil commission with generous support from Raulee Marcus, Stephen Block, and Robert Braun and Joan Friedman (c. 17 minutes)
Intermission
ADÈS: Totentanz (West Coast Premiere) (c. 35 minutes)
Artists:
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Thomas Adès, conductor
Steven Isserlis, cello
Simon Keenlyside, baritone
Christianne Stotijn, mezzo-soprano****
Upcoming concerts: www.laphil.com/calendar
Inside the Music schedule, details, and videos: www.laphil.com/insidethemusic
About this Performance:
With texts drawn from the Bible and John Milton’s poetry, Haydn’s timeless masterpiece is a monumental yet delightful vision of God creating the world, bursting with imagination, wit and beauty. Leading Venezuelan filmmaker Alberto Arvelo collaborates in this joyous production.
After being set free from his duties in the court of Esterházy, Haydn traveled and became more famous internationally. During his visits to London, he heard oratorios by Handel performed by large forces, which inspired him to write an equally substantial work. The result was The Creation, for which Haydn used a German translation of an English libretto first offered to Handel. In 1800, his masterpiece was published in both English and German, and is still performed in both languages. This weekend’s concerts will be sung in English.
The first of three main sections celebrates the creation of primal light, the Earth, the heavenly bodies, bodies of water, weather, and plant life. The second part deals with sea creatures, birds, animals, and finally, man. The final section depicts Adam and Eve’s first happy hours in the Garden of Eden.
Program:
HAYDN: The Creation (c. 105 minutes)
Artists:
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor
Alberto Arvelo, video artist/director
James F. Ingalls, lighting designer
Rachele Gilmore, soprano
Joshua Guerrero, tenor
Johannes Kammler, baritone
Los Angeles Master Chorale
Grant Gershon, artistic director**
Upcoming concerts: www.laphil.com/calendar
Inside the Music schedule, details, and videos: www.laphil.com/insidethemusic