Outside Walt Disney Concert Hall on Thursday, “A baby grand piano on the plaza at 1st Street and Grand Avenue waited patiently to be fed,” writes Mark Swed in Saturday’s (5/4) Los Angeles Times. “Bales of hay were beside it…. The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s keyboard handler, Joanne Pearce Martin, came out with a pitchfork and filled the instrument.… La Monte Young’s ‘Piano Piece for David Tudor #1’ … provided a tender Fluxus moment, bringing the kind of smiles to onlookers that, say, a particularly loving performance of a Mozart piano concerto might. A little while later inside the hall, Emanuel Ax [performed] Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23…. The L.A. Phil premiered ‘The only one’ by the one and only Louis Andriessen. [In] ‘The only one’ … winds and brass hit hard. There is percussion aplenty, and electric guitars. The texts are by a Flemish poet, Delphine Lecompte…. The singer, Nora Fischer, began as punk stylist and changed her clothes and singing style throughout the 20-minute work…. After that, there was only one way to play Beethoven’s First: like new music. Salonen took great care in balance and phrasing but also went in for percussive punch.”
Posted May 8, 2019
