Sublime Symphony

I moved away from Los Angeles before the Walt Disney Concert Hall was built. Two years ago I toured the exterior of this iconic building, but was not allowed inside the auditorium proper. This weekend I finally had the opportunity to attend a concert there. It was one of this season's 10th anniversary opening concerts. Disney Concert Hall is everything they say and more. If you ever have the opportunity to attend a concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall, don't think twice. Just do it, you will not regret it. The acoustics are exquisite. This concert happened to be the LA Philharmonic, not the breathtaking "French Fries" pipe organ unfortunately, but the organ was on full display. Huge curved wood pedal pipes up to 32 feet long were arrayed in a near random explosive array. Obviously a controversial design, but equally obviously the best design for LA, this is not your grandmother's concert hall or organ. Our seatmates were 10 year symphony season subscribers. Their first words when we arrived were "If you ever get a chance, you must come to hear the organ". They had no idea how much I would have loved to hear the Gehry/Rosales/Glatter-Götz organ had a concert been available. Toyota's organ gift made me proud to own one of their cars. It is unfortunate that we missed Hector Olivera's organ recital by just over a week (coming up Sunday October 13, 2013). As with the San Francisco Davies Symphony Hall Ruffati, there are only four major organ recitals per year. In addition to Hector Olivera, only Ullrich Böhme, Ann Elise Smoot, and Paul Jacobs will be giving recitals at Disney Hall. http://www.laphil.com/tickets/series-detail/organ-recital. However, I did hear from a staff member that the organ will be used in Phantom of the Opera around Halloween time.

I can't comment on the sound of the organ obviously, but I can tell you that from our balcony seats we could hear the instruments in brilliant clarity seldom heard elsewhere. The program was a combination of percussion concerto (world premiere of Lieberson's Shing Kham featuring a marimba, drums and other percussion), Salieri's composition student Franz Schubert's "Tragic" Symphony No. 4, and Tchaikovsky's crowd pleasing Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23, featuring virtuoso pianist Yefim Bronfman who receive a standing ovation and graciously played an encore ignoring the inevitable exhaustion induced by the 'unplayable' Tchaikovsky concerto.

We don't hear the word 'sublime' bandied about too much these days. Perhaps it is because it is so hard to imagine what the word means in our hectic, horrific, often fear driven lives. But perhaps one could do worse than put on some comfortable clothes, dim the lights, or just close your eyes as I did while listening to the second movement of Schubert's 4th: http://youtu.be/nM6FlD7ctXQ

Sublime.