Gustavo Dudamel rehearses the Los Angeles Philharmonic for “Sound/Stage,” a new series of pandemic concerts filmed at an empty Hollywood Bowl. Photo by Natalie Suarez / LA Phil
“At nine-thirty on the morning of August 1st, thirty-eight members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic gathered onstage at the Hollywood Bowl, in the Hollywood Hills, to play the final movement of Maurice Ravel’s ‘Mother Goose’ Suite,” writes Alex Ross in the September 28 issue of The New Yorker. “It was the first time that an appreciable number of L.A. Phil musicians had played together since the covid-19 lockdown began…. Music director Gustavo Dudamel said, ‘That first chord—we were in tears.’… The L.A. Phil … is launching a series of nine online videos, ‘SOUND/STAGE,’ which will begin airing weekly on September 25th…. I observed two days of the sessions and felt my own rush of emotion at seeing an orchestra in person for the first time since early March…. The L.A. Phil has released two previews of its ‘SOUND/STAGE’ series, including the finale of ‘Mother Goose.’… Strikingly, the videos don’t try to hide the strangeness of the moment. A palpable melancholy hangs over the sight of the musicians playing inside an empty amphitheater—an atmosphere that all the players I talked to commented on…. The videos somehow register the orchestra’s yearning to be reunited with its audience.”
