“The future of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra appeared before our eyes and ears Sunday night,” writes Richard S. Ginell in Monday’s (4/29) San Francisco Classical Voice. “He is Jaime Martín, 53, formerly a first-chair flutist in several London orchestras [and] a conductor only since 2013…. While he officially starts work this fall, the concerts in Glendale and at UCLA over the weekend amounted to Martín’s de facto debut—and an auspicious one … Sometimes his emphatic stick technique reminds me of Zubin Mehta; other times … he brings to mind Leonard Bernstein…. Each of his programs in 2019-2020 contains a new work and the first part of his program Sunday featured the West Coast premiere of Bryce Dessner’s 2018 song cycle Voy a Dormir, [an] attractive, alluringly orchestrated, sometimes melancholy, 25-minute quartet of songs [to a text] by the Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni … that basically bids farewell to the world.” In Mozart’s Requiem, with vocal soloists and the USC Thornton Chamber Singers, “Martín rose to the challenge, powering a forceful, robust rendition that valued emotion and forward thrust over period-performance niceties.” Also on the program was “Der Abschied” from Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, with mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor.
Posted May 2, 2019
