Gordon and I went to our last concert of the season at Disney Hall last night. Esa-Pekka Salonen guest conducted a Boulez, Bartok, and Debussy program. The first Boulez was a series of selections from Notations. The pianist was Pierre-Laurant Aimard. The piece opened with a spot light on Airmant and expanded to include a HUGE orchestra when they came in. I don’t really get Boulez. It was a lot of sound and it only took eleven minutes so I stayed with it but it’s new music. You know, clank tinkle crash. I’ve never learned what to listen for.
I enjoyed Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 3 much more. Aimard made that knuckle-buster look easy and it finished with a bang. Lots of fun. I got a kick out of the fact that Mr. Airmard sat with some friends in the orchestra like a regular person. Guess he wanted to enjoy the rest of the show. People applauded lightly when he sat and he graciously nodded but that was it. Nice touch.
DeBusy’s La mer was the final piece before intermission. Loved it, of course. It made the Boulez worth it. But after intermission was another Boulez piece. I read the program notes to see if the experts could explain it to me ,but it was all polymetric this and sequential that. I concluded that this piece was more math than music. Various parts of the orchestra sat around the hall. We had the flutes behind us and reeds to the left of us. The sound bounced all over and kept me alert. The piece also included The L.A. Dance Project. The choreographer was named Millepied which I translated to Thousand Feet. That’s an appropriate name for a choreographer. The dancers were wonderful but I don’t know how they kept it together with all the other moving pieces. The program said that each performance was different and sometimes all the moving pieces didn’t end together. O-kay. As I said; math, not music. Esa-Pekka wore a Charlie Chaplin Little Tramp suit with one black and white glove and one red one. I have no idea what that signified. It was an interesting piece but I’ve never been good at math. I didn’t understand it but I didn’t fall asleep either. Gordon stayed awake too so that means it was compelling.
Anyway, it was a nice way to spend an evening. Particularly since the internet went out at 4 pm and we had no TV, no Alexa, no nothing. The silence was deafening. It was still off when we got home so we went to bed early. I didn’t realize what a TV habit we had. I think we should start weaning ourselves off. I don’t like much that’s on anyway.
On to next season!