United States Ortiz, Mendelssohn: Alisa Weilerstein (cello), Jana McIntyre (soprano), Deepa Johnny (mezzo-soprano), María Valverde (narrator), Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Philharmonic / Gustavo Dudamel (conductor). Disney Hall, Los Angeles, 3.10.2024. (LV)
Gabriela Ortiz – Dzonot
Mendelssohn – A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Overture, Op.21 & Incidental Music, Op.61
Before heading to Carnegie Hall to launch the new season, Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic opened their season at Walt Disney Concert Hall on the West Coast with the world premiere of Dzonot, Gabriela Ortiz’s cello concerto, and Mendelssohn’s complete music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Like Altar de Cuerda, the violin concerto she wrote for Maria Dueñas and the LA Philharmonic in 2021, Ortiz’s Dzonot, written for the Philharmonic and Alisa Weilerstein, is musically about passion, color and the kind of energy that only the most intrepid of soloists have the courage and chops to take on. The composer wrote the following note: ‘As a form of protest, Dzonot [the Mayan word for abyss] constitutes my way of calling for an end to our neglect of the urgent need to preserve these ecosystems within the context of the ongoing climate crisis’.
The concerto’s four movements were inspired by the biodiversity of sinkholes on the Yucatán Peninsula and their spiritual interpretation as entrances to the underworld; its vital sources of water, alive with flora and fauna like the jaguar and the Toh bird; and hopes for survival amid deforestation. The work is long and bold, absolutely dazzling for the orchestra and demanding of the soloist – the same kind of superhuman virtuosity that Maria Dueñas so magnificently supplied, and there were moments when Weilerstein reached that same level.
Introduced by gentle bells and chimes, Weilerstein entered amid a miasma of orchestral sound. Throughout the piece, she found romantic skeins and sunlight after terrific gymnastics triggered by ferocious short cadenzas and riffs with double-stopped octaves and ghostly harmonics. She did amazing things with impossibly swift, deliciously thrilling runs to the upper reaches of her highest string and was at her most elegant in ‘Jaguar’, an exquisite solo accompanied by percussion while magical harmonies swirled in the orchestra. However, from my seat along the side of the hall, Weilerstein was not properly balanced by the orchestra. As a result, for much of the time – even during quieter lyrical passages in unison – Weilerstein simply could not be heard. As the piece wore on, she began scratching in fast passages – perhaps in an effort to be heard. There is a cello concerto there if one could hear more of the cello; presumably these balance issues will be worked out when the orchestra reaches Carnegie Hall.
Ortiz’s bedmate was Mendelssohn’s Overture and complete Incidental Music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, narrated in Spanish (with English subtitles) but with the vocal and choral bits still sung in English. The LA Philharmonic played all the notes, and often very beautifully, but they seemed tentative at the start, the Scherzo lumbered and Dudamel lacked that heightened sense of light and delicacy that occurs in Oberon and Titania’s realm. Although the LA Master Chorale sang very sweetly, and Jana McIntyre and Deepa Johnny were almost indecently in tune and ethereally creamy in texture, with McIntyre silvery in ‘You spotted snakes’, it sounded like a run-through for much of it. The Wedding March woke the audience up, and after a Finale that sounded more like Sullivan of Gilbert & Sullivan than it usually does, all was mended as Puck says.
While the Mendelssohn played, a slideshow of fuzzy images of Midsummer Night’s Dream-related art ‘from Edwin Landseer to William Blake’ played on the Disney Hall’s two video screens above the choral terrace – for The Wedding March it switched to footage from Max Reinhardt’s kitschy 1935 film – and María Valverde, Dudamel’s wife, read excerpts from the play in castellano as she ranged about the stage and behind the choral terrace in a wraithlike gown. The necessary subtitles in English were projected on two panels enough below the videos so that it was not possible to read them, see the videos and watch the actor at the same time.
If they had wanted to be cool, they would have played Korngold’s score for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. If they had wanted to be really cool, they would have had it narrated in English. What a concept!
Laurence Vittes