Silverlake Blvd.

The Abduction from the Seraglio @ Dorothy Chandler

 

Abduction should be fast and funny. But maintaining the breezy tempo is a problem, because the music keeps stopping. And unfortunately the dialogue is never up to Mozart’s level. (How could it?) It is a lesson in the importance of continuo and recitative, which seem silly extras until they’re absent.

Updating the setting from Imaginary Ottoman Empire to the Orient Express circa the Jazz Age was a promising concept. But they never pulled it off. The principles were not clever clowns, so most of the physical humor fell flat.

The exception was So Young Park as the confidante/servant. She was not only on top of Mozart’s exacting vocal music, but also elegantly delivered the slapstick shenanigans devised by director James Robinson. She even managed to lure Morris Robinson (the bad guy Osmin stuck on her) into superior clowning. They made the show. Allen Moyer’s cutaway railroad cars were cute from the Loge, but you probably had to be in the Orchestra section to get the full effect.

Abduction is a tough piece to stage, but the music is worth it. Mozart presents the emotions of his characters with complete conviction. Konstanze’s “Welcher Wechsel herrscht...Traurigkeit ward mir zum Loose” is the quintessence of despair. The music embodies this despair, with complete sympathy.

But at the same time, the subtlety is so exacting, that the music, as it evolves, presents the despair not as a single state, but as a progression of finely discriminated, varied states. It is not Despair, but a specific story of the progress of a specific despair—this woman’s experience, in this place, for this period of time. Konstanze’s situation is not a single, fixed thing. It touches self-pity, then regret, then defiance, then flies off in heroic postures, … and so on.

This mutability constitutes, for Mozart, hope. The music does not pretend despair is unreal, but suggests, tactfully, that it is temporary.

Love raptures and despair are of course still in vogue—no translation necessary. But Mozart also gives Kontanze and Belmonte "Welch ein Geschick! O Qual der Seele"—an opportunity to proclaim that their love is stronger than death. This is not such a popular idea. Mozart treats it with sympathy, but also arranges matters so that this bravado is not put to the test.

Mozart, Schoenberg, Steve Reich @ Disney Hall

 

L.A. Phil demonstrated a range of unflashy, ardent virtuosities over the last two weeks of January.

First the All-Reich celebration on the 17^th. I needed this. Even better, the Mallet Quartet (2009) might be Reich’s most cheerful work. There is just enough dryness, relentlessness and repetition to retain credibility. But it’s also more in touch with pop traditions, from do-wop on. The ending is ecstatic.

The newest item on the program, Pulse (2015) doesn’t care about credibility at all. It’s not only pop, but light pop, a Reichian version of Michel Legrand’s Umbrellas of Cherborg.

In Tehillim (1981), the Synergy Vocals female quartet of singers was beyond praise. Precise, warm, animated, incisive. I can’t imagine a better performance. And what music! The best vocalists-plus-ensemble music since Mahler.

Then on the 28^th there was a matinee with Emanuel Ax. Ax’s amiable stage presence dispels every hint of drama. His art hides his art. He makes so little show of his performance, he tricks you into thinking its no big deal. But it’s an enormous deal.

For instance, I can’t imagine a better presentation of Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto (1942). His command of the music is absolute. He was on top of all of the various moods: angst, festivity, ferocity, bemusement, introspection, exclamation. The cadenzas were especially beautiful—the one after the big brass explosion, and the other at the end of the 3^rd movement, before the quick-step 4^th begins. 

For all its serialism, it’s no more challenging than a Richard Strauss tone poem. And a good deal better humored than that. The audience roared its approval.

I can’t help think that AS heard be-bop or at least some progressive jazz. It’s pop as pop as he ever got (after the cabaret songs). It’s also a film score, but instead of an expressionist cinematic nightmare, this time to an atmospheric American noir thriller.

It’s a work of reconciliation. It’s morning. Yawning and looking out at the new day. City not countryside. Irritations, demands, but not torment. Rather sweet. Almost Elmer or Leonard Bernstein. Mid-century blues. You can absolutely imagine Oscar Levant (to whom we owe its conception) playing it.

The concert began with Accompaniment to a Film Scene (1930). Dudamel and the L.A. Phil delineated each gesture, every contrast and transition with nuance and grace. It is breathlessly fast-paced, the moods shifting abruptly from tenderness to terror, pathos to exhilaration. And each passage—or scene—is densely packed with dissonance, polyrhythm, polyphony. There’s a whole epic here. The implied movie is a tumultuous Fritz Lang thriller.

Then Ax did Mozart’s Piano Concerto #14. His Mozart is not a proto-expressionist, but always in keeping. There’s a focus on the whole, rather than the most theatrically effective bits.

The concert ended with Dudamel leading a reduced L.A. Phil in Mozart’s Paris symphony (#31). This was a surprise. I didn’t think Dudamel or the Phil had any special affinity for Mozart. But Ax’s example obviously informed their performance. It avoided obvious show-off stuff, in favor giving the whole work unity. The rhythmic liveliness was especially marked—it danced along—but not too much. It was earnest and warm, but not headlong. Lucid, but not pedantic. More, please!