Friday February 24, 2006 SGN.org |
 |
Volume 34 Issue 08 |
 |
|
Saturday, Nov 21, 2009
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
L.A.'s new Disney Hall: Great sound, great music, great fun |
||
.jpg) |
||
| L.A.'s new Disney Hall: Great sound, great music, great fun | ||
| by Rod Parke
- SGN A&E Writer
With far too many of our friends moving to Palm Springs, my partner Dale and I decided to escape from the Seattle rain and visit PFLAG activists Mike and Carol Balasa, with a side trip to experience Los Angeles' new Walt Disney Concert Hall. A prominent New York critic recently called LA the new epicenter of American Music. This visit helped me to discover why. Frank Gehry, designer of Seattle's Experience Music Project, has - in Disney Hall - given LA a building of beauty and significance. The auditorium is reminiscent of the Philharmonie in Berlin, with light hardwood paneling and huge, convex ceiling panels that look almost like the underbellies of whales. The room is more intimate and warmer than Berlin; front-to-back distances seem shorter than most large halls. The acoustics are very resonant, like Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, with absolutely no loss of detail. And the dynamics are much louder than Seattle's Benaroya Hall. Even though we were sitting to the extreme left of and above the violins, balances were perfect. The only fault I would find is the lack of a spacious, inviting lobby such as our McCaw Hall. The program gave us an excellent chance to judge the sound with both large and smaller orchestras. It began with an all-too-typical example of an over-orchestrated contemporary work: the 12-minute "Night's Black Bird" by British composer Harrison Birtwistle. I found nothing of interest in it, nor were its huge orchestral calisthenics any fun. It was not the hall's fault that one often saw first-chair players working away but totally inaudible, being buried in a wash of sloppy orchestration. From the inept we traveled to the sublime as Christoph von Dohnanyi led soloist Yefim Bronfman and the LA Philharmonic in Beethoven's 'Piano Concerto No. 3.' Every phrase was articulate and utterly clear. The greatly reduced orchestra produced a luminous sound of exquisite textures and delicate dynamics, all pointing to a richness of invention seldom heard these days in the conducting of Beethoven. Perfect balances allowed us to appreciate the woodiness of the bassoons, the mellow horns, and the differences between the timbre of the violas and violins. The low-frequency notes of the double basses and the clean percussive beats of the tympani were free of the masking boomyness heard in many a hall and in most recordings. My tears in the second movement were not so much from the emotional content of the music as from the exquisite sounds - a kind of Beethoven nirvana. The LA Phil is one fine orchestra! Our chance to test Disney's acoustics on brilliant orchestration for huge orchestra came with Stravinsky's complete 'Firebird.' Unlike in the Birtwistle, at no point could I find a first-chair musician playing notes I could not hear. Every pluck of the harp, every bark of a bassoon, every bell-note from the celesta came through with thrilling clarity. Von Dohnanyi was not so ideal here as in the Beethoven. The orchestra played well enough but missed the ultimate beauty of the Stravinsky score. The sound was a bit on the heavy side, wanting more filigree and finesse. Nonetheless, it was terrific fun to hear Stravinsky's brilliance in that acoustic. Some halls have clarity but lack warmth. Disney has all the clarity of the Philharmonie, the dynamics of Edinburgh's Usher Hall, and the resonance and most of the warmth of the Concertgebouw. It is a sonic gem. As we took off for Seattle a few days later in Alaska's "Disney" jet, I regretted the growing distance from LA's Disney/LA Phil combo. Reviewer Rod Parke can be reached at rod@sgn.org |
||
 |
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
International Readers |
  It's new!A blog created by the SGN staff so you can be heard |
|
 |
DigitalTeamWorks presents  websites for Artists looking for a great email us for more information
|
 |
 |
 |
copyright Seattle Gay News - DigitalTeamWorks 2006