By Mark Swed, Times Staff Writer
Jul 17 2004
Successful and eventful as were the opening night galas at the Walt Disney
Concert Hall last fall, the venue's first real test came with the first program
of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's regular season a week later. That was when
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted a vital, viscerally incisive performance of
Mahler's Second Symphony, a symphonic epic of life, death and resurrection
that, in the acoustically immediate space, felt as though it took possession of
a listener.
Thursday night, the Los Angeles Philharmonic attempted to repeat history. After
two weeks of concerts under the Hollywood Bowl's new shell — evenings that
included orchestral pops concerts, rock bands and a staging of "A
Midsummer Night's Dream" with Mendelssohn's incidental music — Salonen
conducted Mahler's Second once more, this time for the first proper test of the
shell's sound system.
The summer is young. So is the sound system. Amplifying Abba can't be helpful
practice for amplifying a large symphony orchestra, a chorus and two vocal
soloists. This was the first time the Philharmonic was placed near the front of
the stage and directly under the acoustical canopy, so there is surely more to
learn about tricky sonic reflections in the new shell. It is too early to give
up hope.
That said, the artificial orchestral sound heard on this occasion meant that
this Mahler had little, if any, relationship to the memorable Disney
experience.
For some, that may be beside the point. The Bowl brings its own pleasures.
Thursday was an ideally balmy evening. The air was soft. Under the exquisite
golden glow of fading light, violins buzzed and the cellos intensely cut their
melodic swaths as they began Mahler's imposing score.
My own experience with Mahler's Second at the Bowl goes back to a performance
of it given by the Utah Symphony under Maurice Abravanel in the '60s. A high
school student, I sat in the dollar seats up high (although I sneaked down for
the final movements). It was my first live Mahler Second. I thought it glorious
and walked on clouds for days afterward.
This time, such a reaction for a newcomer, or for someone who still walks on
clouds after Mahler's Second, seemed out of the question, what with the tubby
thump of cellos, squealing violins and screechy high winds. The lack of transparency
or dimensionality from the loudspeakers so dulled the orchestral sound that the
Los Angeles Philharmonic's personality proved unrecognizable.
It's a good thing the soloists couldn't know how they sounded in the wide open
spaces beyond the stage. Stephanie Blythe's sumptuous mezzo-soprano effectively
fills the largest concert halls. But that translated, in the fourth movement (a
short, existential song, "Urlicht"), into echo-chamber booms that
bounced around the amphitheater like a cartoon character inflated with helium.
The microphones grotesquely turned soprano Heidi Grant Murphy's vibrato into
loudly oscillating sound waves that threatened to stimulate deeply buried
earthquake faults — although it also provided a kind of physical aural massage
that was not altogether unpleasant. The basses of the Los Angeles Master
Chorale sounded, as here amplified, something like chanting Tibetan monks.
Video screens added to the aural confusion. Camera movements often seemed
arbitrary, at times drawing attention to players concentrating on some minor
inner part. What the screens might have been used for, but were not, was the
text.
The brilliance and magnificence of Salonen's Mahler Second in Disney Hall was
in the details, as well as in his vital intellectualism and physical
athleticism. There was a direct connection between idea and sound. At the Bowl,
there was need for translation. The intermediary here was not sound but video.
The cameras frequently lingered on the conductor and would have done well to linger
longer, since they invariably missed his most exciting moments.
A tittering audience was delighted, however, that the screens did catch Salonen
adjusting his suspenders between movements. And I fear that may wind up being a
prominent image that some newcomers to Mahler took away from the performance.
So much for walking on clouds.