If there is one trait that is likely to define Zubin Mehta when all is said and done, it’s durability. He holds the record for the longest regime as music director of the New York Philharmonic and held the same distinction at the Los Angeles Philharmonic until Esa-Pekka Salonen surpassed him by one year.
And neither of these terms come close to Mehta’s tenure at the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, where he has presided over one of the most fractious ensembles on Earth since 1977 as music director (and before that as music advisor from 1969).
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So the Mehta-Israel team is, to say the least, a familiar brand, and it came calling again to Los Angeles this week as part of a U.S. tour. There were, though, a couple of twists.
This time, Mehta and the orchestra performed not at the usual large culture temples but in the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. Granted, they were originally supposed to appear in Walt Disney Concert Hall on Tuesday night, but that concert was canceled and the orchestra played an abbreviated benefit concert at the Wallis instead. On Wednesday, the orchestra played a full program at the Wallis much like the originally scheduled Disney Hall date, with Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony replacing Dvorák’s “New World” Symphony.
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When the Mariinsky Ballet performed “Cinderella” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Oct. 8, even the wondrous Diana Vishneva as Cinderella couldn’t bring unity to the movement, but she danced with flawless, fearless authority. Read more >>
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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins leaves a rehearsal of his play “Appropriate,” opening Oct. 4 at the Mark Taper Forum, to eat first with a reporter, then later with his agent and some unspecified Hollywood people, who presumably hope to lure him away from the field and city where he has experienced meteoric success in the last five years. Read more >>
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Soprano Abigail Fischer performs Oct. 7 in the opera “Songs from the Uproar” at REDCAT in Los Angeles.
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Moisés Kaufman’s muscular revival of “Bent,” which played at the Mark Taper Forum, opening on July 26, renders what many had written off as a parochial drama about the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany into a gripping tale of love, courage and identity. Read review >>
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Malaviki Sarukkai performing at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica on July 19, 2015. Sarukkai is the best-known exponent of South Indian classical dance.
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Bramwell Tovey conducts the L.A. Phil with pianist Garrick Ohlsson in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at the Hollywood Bowl on July 14, 2015.
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Argentine dancer Herman Cornejo performs in the West Coast premiere of “Tango y Yo” as part of the Latin portion of BalletNow.
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Jake Shears plays Greta in Martin Sherman’s play “Bent” at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles through Aug. 23, 2015.
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Dancers rehearse a one-night-only performance choregraphed by Raiford Rogers, one of L.A.’s most-noted choreographers. This year the dance will be to a new original score by Czech composer Zbynek Mateju.
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Oscar-winning actor Ben Kingsley in Los Angeles on July 9, 2015.
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Mia Sinclair Jenness, left, Mabel Tyler and Gabby Gutierrez alternate playing the title role in the musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “Matilda” at the Ahmanson Theatre. The three are shown during a day at Santa Monica Pier on June 16, 2015.
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American Contemporary Ballet Company members Zsolt Banki and Cleo Magill perform a dance routine originally done by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. This performance was presented as part of “Music + Dance: L.A.” on Friday, June 19, 2015.
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Miguel, a Grammy-winning guitarist, producer, singer and lyricist, is photographed in San Pedro on Wednesday, June 10, 2015. His new album “Wildheart,” explores L.A.’s “weird mix of hope and desperation.”
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Los Angeles-born artist Mark Bradford is photographed in front of “The Next Hot Line.” This piece is part of his show “Scorched Earth,” installed at the Hammer Museum in Westwood, June 11, 2015.
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Paige Faure, center, plays Ella in “
Cinderella,” which opened at the Ahmanson Theater on March 18.
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The Los Angeles Opera concluded its season with “The Marriage of Figaro,” with Roberto Tagliavini as Figaro and Pretty Yende as Susanna, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
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“Trinket,” a monumental installation by Newark-born, Chicago-based artist William Pope.L, features an American flag that is 16 feet tall and 45 feet long. The work is on display at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA through June 28.
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Conductor
Gustavo Dudamel’s contract with the Los Angeles Philharmonic has been extended to mid-2022.
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Alex Knox, from left, Carolyn Ratteray, Lynn Milgrim and Paige Lindsey White in “Pygmalion” in spring 2015 at the Pasadena Playhouse.
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On March 17, Google celebrated the addition of more than 5,000 images to its Google Street Art project with a launch party at the Container Yard in downtown Los Angeles.
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Los Angeles architect Jon Jerde, who was outspoken about his opinions on the
state of public space, died on
Feb. 9. The CityWalk at Universal Studios is among his famous designs.
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Diana Vishneva as Princess Aurora in
American Ballet Theatre‘s production of “
Sleeping Beauty” that premiered at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in March.
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Los Angeles Philharmonic assistant conductor
Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla leads the orchestra in her first L.A. Phil subscription concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall on March 1 in a program of Mozart, Beethoven and Stravinsky.
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Rachele Gilmore as Alice and Christopher Lemmings as Mouse with supernumeraries in “
Alice in Wonderland.” Susanna Malkki conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in this collaboration with the L.A. Opera at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
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Marcia Rodd, left, and Dick Cavett reprise their roles in “
Hellman v. McCarthy,” a play inspired by actual events on “The Dick Cavett Show,” at Theatre 40 in February. The production starred Cavett as himself and Rodd as literary celebrity Mary McCarthy.
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Irish playwright
Conor McPherson‘s latest play, “
The Night Alive,” ran at the Geffen Playhouse from Feb. 11 through March 15.
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Ric Salinas, left, Herbert Siguenza and Richard Montoya, of the three-man Latino theater group Culture Clash, brought their “Chavez Ravine: An L.A. Revival” to the Kirk Douglas Theatre to mark the group’s 30th anniversary. The play ran from Feb. 4 through March 1.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) This was the first time the relatively tiny 500-seat Wallis had hosted a big symphony orchestra, and it seemed like a mismatch. From the American and Israeli national anthems onward, the sound from the crowded stage was congested, opaque, lacking in adequate reverberation and bass, and when the timpani went at it, its boom blotted out almost everything else.
To be fair, it’s questionable if Disney Hall would have been able to clarify things much, for when I heard Mehta and Israel there in 2007, the sound was similarly thick-set, homogenous, visceral. This is the Mehta sound — it has been since his years in Los Angeles, albeit somewhat mellower now — and it’s different from those that other conductors have produced from the chameleonic orchestra.
Mehta’s rendition of the “Eroica” Symphony was often weighed down by heavy textures and deliberate tempos, but every now and then, he would coax the performance to another level with a carefully graded, cannily detonated climax in the second movement or a sharply executed fugue in the finale. As in the past, Mehta could get the orchestra to execute a Viennese lilt in passages of Ravel’s “La Valse,” drawn-out near the breaking point, and he still whips up a bracingly brutal fury toward the end.
The other new twist was the adventurous inclusion of “Journey to the End of the Millennium” by Josef Bardanashvili, the Georgian-born composer who now lives in Israel. Drawing upon passages from an opera of the same name, this symphonic poem broiled and swirled in an epic, apocalyptic mood for nearly 22 minutes, the Hebraic element occasionally present in the pounding drums or a solo violin episode. It would be nice to explore it again — preferably in a bigger hall.
A graceful, autumnal-sounding Mozart Overture to “The Marriage of Figaro” finished off the night.
ALSO:
Classical music + visuals = intrigue, at UCLA’s ‘Beyond Music’
L.A. Phil and Semyon Bychkov achieve a musical summit with ‘Alpine Symphony’
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra explores Mozart by way of Sacred Harp, Haydn by way of flamenco
