“German conductor and composer Matthias Pintscher … began the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s new year in a program of French music and a piece of his own at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Friday night,” writes Mark Swed in Monday’s (1/8) Los Angeles Times. “He will make his Hollywood Bowl debut this summer…. Pintscher has been tapped to be music director of the 2020” Ojai Music Festival in California. “This enigmatic musician … has followed, as conductor and composer, in Pierre Boulez’s footsteps. He is currently music director of Ensemble Intercontemporain and principal conductor of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra … both of which Boulez founded.… He lives in New York, where he teaches at the Juilliard School…. His conducting style is relatively broad, a little heavy and somewhat reserved, all of which can disguise his impressive command of a score. He has a generous sense of color. In the [LA Phil’s] ‘Rhapsodie Espagnole,’ he stayed out of the way, letting Ravel take the orchestra for a scenic ride. [In Pintscher’s violin concerto] ‘mar’eh,’ … [with] soloist … Renaud Capuçon … the orchestra was decorative, quiet, iridescently hued…. Pintscher made the performance seem as if it were happening on its own.”
Posted January 9, 2018
