Classically Trained: When art inspires music
It’s too bad more art exhibits don’t have live instrumentalists with them. Then two great art forms — visual and music — would come together for an overall inspiring experience.
That’s what happened at Sunday’s “Music and Art,” a chamber music concert at the Samueli Theater in Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts. It was the last of the 2010-11 Café Ludwig series, where Pacific Symphony musicians and other guests led by Orli Shaham play for a few hundred listeners in the theater of four-person tables. Coffee and pastries are included.
Though filled with more music than art, “Music and Art” provided a fascinating glimpse into how visual art inspired the program’s music, which included “The Tiger’s Ear,” by Bruce Adolphe, and Mussorgsky’s original piano version of “Pictures at an Exhibition.”
Adolphe, a New Yorker composer-author and NPR contributor, was present and gave a preview speech about “Tiger’s Ear,” which he wrote as a reaction to six expressionist paintings.
Pacific Symphony principal players Mercedes Smith (flute), Jessica Pearlman (oboe), Raymond Kobler (violin), Bob Becker (viola) and Timothy Landauer (cello) played four movements of “Tiger’s Ear” as Shaham accompanied on piano.
The first segment was a hurried piece reacting to Jackson Pollock’s “No. 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist).” The movement musically spun and twirled in the way Pollock famously dripped, poured and splashed paint onto his canvases. Adolphe said the piano part described Pollock while the five instruments were his tools: paint, brushes and the like.
This movement, while interesting on an intellectual level and demanding on the players, didn’t strike much as much as what proceeded it did. The movement in reaction to Barnett Newman’s “Dionysius” (1949) was my favorite of the whole program.
“Dionysius,” as Adolphe said, is more impressive when seen in real life. An up-close examination highlights the painter’s techniques. But to me (being a fan of art but no real critic of it), the “Dionysius” is a vertical, rectangular canvas that appears to be filled with something resembling green-tinted seawater traversed by two yellowish lines.
Musically, however, Adolphe’s contemporary-sounding movement incorporated gorgeous piano ostinatos that symbolized the two steady lines through “Dionysius”; the remaining five instruments flourished and filled the room like Newman’s colors fill his canvas. The result was an ethereal, gentle sound that, when gazing upon the Newman piece projected above the musicians, really could put you wherever your mind’s eye imagined. For me it was the ocean.
It all struck me in a way that I still have a hard time describing well enough to do it justice. It’s one of those pieces where you can’t recall a tune from it by memory, but you do remember the strong impression it left once completed.
After “Tiger’s Eye,” Shaham, a truly gifted and expressive pianist, gave a wonderful performance of “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Each of the movements had the painting that inspired it projected above the stage. The whole setup was like the Pacific Symphony’s performance of the Ravel-orchestrated version last October.
Shaham will be returning next season to lead three more Café Ludwig concerts.
For the classically inclined fan, these are a nice change from the grandiose concert hall. You’ll get to hear the Pacific Symphony’s best in a smaller, more intimate environment, and enjoy old classics or be delighted by something new.
BRADLEY ZINT is a copy editor for the Daily Pilot and a classically trained musician. E-mail him story ideas at bradley.zint@latimes.com.
