In 1707 George Frideric Handel, a 22 -year -old radical composer who works in Rome, made the Vatican and the general public soar with “the triumph of time and deception” (the triumph of time and disillusionment). A piece masked by an oratory to bypass the ban on the Church on the profane work, the impolitic work on the previous and the current is fashioned as a battle between extravagance and holiness. Humanizing our obsession with the sweetness and obligation for the Council, Handel’s first masterpiece happens as well timed as it’s titled.
Exactly 240 years later, one other 22 -year -old radical, Pierre Boulez, started his second Sonata for piano. This wild and impolitic work shocked the civilian civilian salons with what appeared pure ugliness. Yet it took such a fancy and aggressive sonata to sow the submit -war European avant -garde and supply a base for music that was heading in new instructions.
Boulez, who died 9 years in the past, would have been 100 final Wednesday. Among the common celebrations of his work this season, a younger and suitably wild pianist with a style for Death Metal, Thomas Mellan, has impressively captured the assault of the second Boulez Sonata for the composer’s birthday as a part of the Plan spheres Series on the Colburn School. The subsequent evening, on the opposite facet of the highway to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Philharmonic in Los Angeles offered “Il Trionfo” to conclude a revolutionary Handel venture, the primary episode of the French director and the brand new three -year position of Emmanuelle Haïm as a collaborator of the orchestra artist.
What are the probabilities of these uncommon works that come to the again? Very massive in most locations however much less stunning right here. Boulez had shut ties with the founding father of Piano Sfere Leonard Stein (who gave the primary efficiency of Los Angeles of the second Sonata in 1963) and with Phil (who will have a good time Boulez subsequent month).
At full proper, Haïm broke baroque limitations. He made an arrest debut of La Phil in 2011, bringing to Handel a uninhibited lust, and with each subsequent side it prompted probably the most fashionable, virtually unpredictable and altering Baroque as Boulez. His appointment as a collaborator of artists follows that of the director of the Opera Yuval Sharon, who was higher often called an inventive disintegrator, a designation equally appropriate for Haïm.
Nine years in the past, Haïm was the director in a extremely provocative staging of “Il Trionfo” on the Aix-en-Provence summer time pageant that included a French theorist’s filmed clip Jacques Derrida, who was typically accused of doing literary research what Boulez had executed to music and deputy versa. Haïm additionally recorded “Il Trionfo” in 2004 in Ircam, the Boulez of the Computer Music Institute in Paris.
Haïm framed “the triumph” to Disney Hall with singular brilliance. His Handel venture included three applications. For the common subscription live shows of La Phil on the weekend of 21 to 23 March, he carried out Bach Magnificat and Handel’s “Dixit Dominus”. This was adopted by two applications with the extraordinary ensemble of instruments from the Haïm interval, the Astrée Concert. These consisted of a Rameau/Handel program, Studies in Lusuriant sounds. “The triumph” got here final. Phil, saving small bills, additionally flew to the astrée choir of 25 members of Haïm in Paris along with eight extraordinary vocal soloists.
Handel’s “Dixit Dominus”, which was composed the identical yr as “Il Trionfo” and started this system of Haïm’s Phil, ready the scene. This can be boldly working, particularly for a sacred work. Avoid the scandal, nonetheless, being a seductive pleasure to hearken to and never embark on probably the most dangerous human wishes of “Il Trionfo”. The Disney Hall supplied the unintegted pleasure. Haïm’s virtuum refrain of astrée has dazzled. Phil has given the most effective approximation of the instruments of the sport interval I met. With Magnificat by Bach and a bis of “Felice, glad that we be” from “semele” by Handel, “Dixit Dominus”, ensured that happiness prevailed. Wonderful smiles throughout, on stage and out of doors.
In the subsequent live performance on March 25, “Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day of Handel”, an surroundings of poems by John Dryden, has taken even much less dangers, a minimum of for anybody who has a love for music. “Ode” celebrates the improved track and the irresistibly vivid instrumental invention, the surprise of music in all its processes and measures. Handel delights within the whitening trumpet, the struggle flute, the miracle of concord, the flexibility of music to tame the wild beast and provide revelations of past. Haïm appeared to have an schooling for his choir of ensembles and his soloists, the soprano Elsa Benoit and the tenor Eric Ferring: finds, in each expression, an increasing number of happiness.
This emotionally optimistic preparation has made “the triumph” seem much more revolutionary with its indemnities to cease musical and psychological formulation. Face the reality and disillusionment made Handel return once more and nonetheless at work of over half a century, rewriting it twice (the final time on the finish of his life) just like the mature and majestic “the triumph of time and reality”. Even so, it’s the freshness of allegorical audacity whereas a younger genius seems to be ahead who has the utmost relevance.
The characters are magnificence, pleasure, time and disillusionment. Beauty is younger and in useless. The pleasure ensures that it could stay that method, so it might additionally dwell it so long as potential. Time says not so shortly. The disillusionment warns her that the highway to salvation has to face the details. It takes 2 hours ½ hours to lastly comply with the disillusionment.
But pleasure can’t be defeated. It is prepared for the subsequent sufferer. He lives for the second and won’t let him go. Time and disillusionment stay abstractions to the purpose the place we now not deceive ourselves.
The impressed singers of Haïm – Benoit (magnificence), Julia Lezhneva (pleasure), Iesyn Davies (disillusionment) and Petr Nekoranec (time) – every has given convincing arguments. Pleasure is commonly offered as a squalid male operator. The fascinating pleasure of Lezhneva served as a ghost, a haunted vagabond that seeks its validation slightly than the victims.
Handel wrote for pleasure considered one of his most well-known and transferring arias, “leaves the plug”. Leave the plug, the pleasure pronounces in lament, take the squad. Handel reused him later in his work “Renaldo”. Haïm moved Thursday’s efficiency along with an depth that didn’t permit to applaud the arias. The extraordinary influence of the “leaving” of Lezhneva was the sound of an enormous viewers that drew that it was reverential worry.
There is little the identical in music to 22 -year -old issues on the Handel and Boulez stage. We are in an period of cheerful interruptions, specifically once we witness the methods of Silicon Valley and the tear of the federal authorities. Handel and Boulez have revealed a special technique. Both could have been aggressive of their requests that the world is prepared for a brand new path. But they snatched the worn -out basic constructions by which they had been deeply educated, understanding what he labored and what he wanted to switch. They took the subsequent step by anticipating the place the brand new freedom would convey them. Both spent the subsequent half century growing concepts that they began in these first works, making them significance, as they nonetheless do.
