Concert Review

Concert Review: LA Phil Green Umbrella, April 5^th

This Tuesday I saw the LA Phil perform works by Ades, Ligeti, Nancarrow, and Francisco Coll.The first piece was called Concert Paraphrase on ‘Powder Her Face’ performed by Thomas Ades on solo piano. What I found most interesting about the piece was the mixing between tonality, chromatic harmony, and what appeared to me as serialism. Many sections of the piece were strongly ambiguous as to what the tonal center was (I dare not say atonal) and others seemed to be based around complex harmonies. Then there were moments of classic tonality. At one point there was even a perfect authentic cadence. What made the piece nice was the fact that every section flowed into the next quite well. Hearing that PAC was unexpected, but it wasn’t out of nowhere. I could tell there was a very subtle lead into it.

The Ligeti piece was possibly my favorite of the night, tied with the Nancarrow. It was titled Sippal, dobbal, nadihegeduvel (With Pipes, Drums, Fiddles) and performed by four percussionists and a mezzo-soprano. The entire piece was broken into seven movements, each one very quick and concise. The percussion was very interesting, at some points there were three marimbas being played simultaneously. Gongs and an abundance of cymbals and other unpitched items added lots of interesting color. The vocals were very strange, speaking another language or even jibberish at times it seemed. While at many times it seemed close to frightening, the vocalist also had many points that were comical. Overall, I describe the piece as captivatingly strange.

Probably my favorite performance was the Nancarrow. Thomas Ades arranged studies 6 and 7 to be performed by two pianos. There was also a video for each study, which featured an extensive and less-than-interesting array of squares and triangles. I had heard these studies before, the original recordings on player piano, and was excited to see human beings try to replicate it. I think the performers did very well. It was impossible for me to notice if they were playing perfectly, especially the rhythm, but it didn’t seem like they missed anything. I’d really like to see the score and find out how the arrangement was created, because I know that Nancarrow used precise ratios to compose the rhythm of the pieces. Both studies were very fun to watch, especially no. 7, with its blazingly fast ending.

The next piece was Piedras, Op. 11 written by Francisco Coll, who apparently is younger than Scott. This one went right over my head to be honest. I didn’t quite follow exactly what the intentions of the composer were, and didn’t really get anything out of it. There was some interesting orchestration happening, but I couldn’t find anything that didn’t confuse the hell out of me.

Closing the concert was another piece written by Thomas Ades, who also conducted the work. It was called Concerto Conciso, Op. 18 which I thought was a funny title for such a long piece of music. What I liked most about it was the percussion. There were two percussionists, each with a very interesting setup. One had mounted guiro, a gong, lots of cymbals and much more. The other had an equally extensive set, including snare, cowbell and what looked like a small rock. He hit the rock with a hard xylophone stick, which made a metronome-like sound; it was interesting. What I thought was most interesting however, was the fact that the entire piece (I believe) was in 4/4 time. I’m not entirely sure, but I never saw the conductor beat any pattern other than four. Much like the some of the Schuller we analyzed, the rhythmic complexity was solely created with internal subdivisions, rather than meter changes.