“The one purely orchestral concert of this week’s all-over-the-map ‘Americas & Americans’ festival at the Hollywood Bowl was Thursday night,” writes Mark Swed in Saturday’s (8/18) Los Angeles Times. “This was Gustavo Dudamel’s opportunity to make a big statement with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He did. The theme was fascinatingly Pan-American and focused around Aaron Copland’s heroic Third Symphony…. The driving last movement of Alberto Ginastera’s improbably neglected First Piano Concerto … received a sensational performance with Sergio Tiempo as the soloist. The improbability of the concerto’s neglect is because the work has had stellar and persuasive champions, including the pianist Martha Argerich and the rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer…. Looking around I saw nothing but people entranced. The applause was enthusiastic.” Reviewing the Copland symphony, Swed writes, “The L.A. Phil gets the essence of Copland as few other orchestras do, and so it seems does Dudamel. There were moments that took my breath away. Some were small ones, such as near the end of the slow movement where concertmaster Martin Chalifour played a violin solo, made of harmonics, with an uninflected tone that felt like a pure distillation of the Copland sound. The orchestra’s pianist, Joanne Pearce Martin, was the brilliant, glittery icing on the cake of the enticing Scherzo. And Dudamel learned an important lesson from Bernstein, which is not to fight the Third’s loftiness. There were no fireworks this evening, yet the fanfare had the sound and effect of them.”
Posted August 21, 2012
