Throughout history, there have been composers who were also great virtuoso musicians — Mozart, Beethoven, Niccolò Paganini, Franz Liszt, Sergei Rachmaninoff, to name a few. But when they were commissioned to write concertos for instruments other than their own, the result was a collaboration.
That’s the case with Joe Hisaishi’s Harp Concerto, composed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s principal harp, Emmanuel Ceysson, who gave the world-premiere performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Thursday, Nov. 14.
In fact, the concerto is a commission shared by the LA Phil, Opéra National de Bordeaux, the Philharmonie de Paris, and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, each of which Ceysson plans to perform the work with.
In a preconcert interview with pianist Sarah Cahill, the harpist said that he grew up a fan of the Studio Ghibli animated feature films by Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki — all of which, except for one, feature scores by Hisaishi. Ceysson had long wished to commission the composer.
He described a scene in which, as a young, up-and-coming harpist, he tried proposing the project on his own to Hisaishi, only to be politely rejected. Many years later, the proposal was renewed, this time with the gravitas of the LA Phil behind it. Even so, Ceysson explained, because of the composer’s many obligations, the process was a slow one that evolved over many months.
According to a member of the musicians’ jury that selected Ceysson in 2019 to become the LA Phil’s new principal harp (out of a group of 70 applicants), his playing had such a wow factor that it blew away the competition. To hear Ceysson tell it, his style grew out of a desire to challenge the cliche that all harpists are gentle spirits seated at instruments that resemble gilded Grecian columns. “My style’s more muscular, more martial,” he said during the preconcert talk.
That’s certainly true: His presence in the orchestra transforms the instrument’s role from ethereal and decorative to boldly soloistic. His preferences are also reflected in the harp he plays. Based on a design by French harpist Carlos Salzedo, Ceysson’s instrument is a masterpiece of angular Art Deco design. But it’s the color, Ferrari red, that really stands out. No one at an LA Phil concert can fail to notice it.
Hisaishi is to Japanese film what John Williams is to American cinema. Hisaishi has scored more than 100 films and has also created a large body of compositions for the concert hall. His followers are legion, and on Thursday, every seat in Disney Hall was filled.
On first hearing, the Harp Concerto was more impressive in its virtuosity than its depth of musicality. It’s scored for strings, double winds and brass, and a large battery of percussion. There is also, rather surprisingly, a major role for a second harp, played from the back of the orchestra, that both mirrors and accents the role of the soloist.
The concerto is classically structured. An extensive first movement (Allegro in B minor) introduces and develops themes that vary between dramatic bravado and pastel passages that flit by like birds on the wing. The exceedingly virtuosic writing for the harp, which certainly reflects Ceysson’s input, includes complex fingerings and metronome-perfect arpeggios, accented by billowing glissandos.
The second movement, in D minor, is languid, sweetly phrased, and laced with cinematic sentimentality. It leads to a substantial cadenza that hits like a rifle shot and changes the temperament of the concerto in an instant. Suddenly the instrument speaks for itself, and it resounded in the hall on Thursday, commanding the audience’s attention.
The cadenza serves as the bridge to the third movement, a toccata in F minor that enters like the black sheep of the concerto. It swings to a jazzy tango groove that ends the piece in a rollicking, upbeat mood. All in all, the concerto might benefit from a good editor.
As a lead-in to the program’s world premiere, Hisaishi conducted his 2023 Adagio for Strings and Two Harps, inspired by but not literally quoting the Adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (and decidedly more lighthearted as well). The Adagio’s lilting melodies and string textures set the scene nicely for the concerto.
What came after intermission, however, was a performance of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (in Maurice Ravel’s arrangement) that was belligerently loud and luridly painted. The LA Phil can do much better than that.
