Two debuts stood out at Walt Disney Concert Hall over the weekend. One was the world premiere of an attractive new concerto grosso by the much-in-demand composer Nico Muhly. The other was the Los Angeles Philharmonic debut of a most impressive 27-year-old French pianist, Alexandre Kantorow. But in the end, the Sunday afternoon concert at Disney Hall was dominated by the music of a onetime Beverly Hills resident named Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Muhly’s 20-minute Concerto Grosso plays the sorts of musical games you would expect considering past examples of the form. The composer had an unusual quartet of orchestral instruments in mind as soloists: flute, trombone, cello, and mallet percussion, manned respectively by LA Phil principals Denis Bouriakov, David Rejano Cantero, Robert deMaine, and Matthew Howard. Howard had a diverse set of toys to play with, including glockenspiel, vibraphone, nine tuned gongs, 18 tuned metal bowls that sounded like glistening bells when struck, and even a kick bass drum that occasionally produced a single thump.
After opening on a single note, the piece took off in a mild contrapuntal frenzy with a bright and cheerful air underpinned by repeating ostinatos in the orchestra. That gave way to a slow middle section, the same old fast-slow-fast layout that has extended from the 17th century all the way into the 21st. Muhly’s sensibility is lyrical in feeling, and this part of the work fell easily, perhaps even romantically, upon the ears.
Things really got interesting in the final section as each solo instrument received a cadenza — or rather, a conversation with like-minded members of the orchestra. Bouriakov conversed with the flute section, deMaine with the cellos, and so forth. Howard and his tuned bowls had the most striking music, dueling with the LA Phil’s drummers. While this engaging piece was commissioned by the Phil and presumably written with its principal players in mind, it ought to travel well among other orchestras.
Eun Sun Kim, the gracefully gesturing music director of San Francisco Opera, came downstate to guest conduct the LA Phil on this occasion. I had seen her lead the Phil once before, in 2019 at the Hollywood Bowl in Rachmaninoff’s last major piece, Symphonic Dances, and I wonder if it was a coincidence that she again came loaded with more late music from the composer’s American period.
Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini was the vehicle for Kantorow, who turned in a tremendously imaginative performance that was, above all, lots of fun. Every variation had its own distinct character. Kantorow could speed things up unpredictably, heighten the flashes of wit, make mischievous contrasts in volume. He applied marvelous shimmering effects, using the pedal to create a smeared impressionistic haze. While he fiddled around with the line of the famously luscious 18th variation, it cohered just enough that when the orchestra chimed in, there were surely goose bumps. (Contrast this with the much-lauded performance here in 2023 by Yuja Wang, who was too wayward in stretching the line and thus lessened the emotional impact. If Rachmaninoff’s own recording of the Rhapsody is a guide, Kantorow came closer to the composer’s vision.)
Kim followed right along in pinpointing the orchestral details in response to Kantorow’s playfulness and ventures into the dark. His encore, a transcription of the Finale from Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird, was full of spectacular tremolos and big chords that made the selection sound almost like, yes, Rachmaninoff.
The concert began with Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3, turning the usual program order — overture, concerto, symphony — on its head. The Third Symphony is an enigma of sorts, seldom performed though often recorded. Like most of Rachmaninoff’s late works, it reflects the composer’s partial acquiescence to the modern world, a step back from the heightened emotions of romanticism but not quite so far as to plant a flag in the fashionable soil of neoclassicism. The overtly Russian nature of the piece’s themes contrasts with the more stripped-down orchestral style — the composer seems caught in a twilight zone, stuck in a century that he doesn’t quite appreciate. Yet he does his best to keep growing as an artist.
In Kim’s hands, the first movement was tentative, not quite unified, although the orchestra played well. Things went better in the second movement, which is really an adagio and scherzo mashed together. Kim approached the somewhat diffuse third movement with sharp vigor, and I especially liked the way the Phil sailed through the brief, clear-cut fugal episode.
