Culture and Trump: A Beethoven mass for ‘an extraordinary time’
Much of Southern California may have been waterlogged from the soaking rain by Sunday night, but that didn’t stop the Los Angeles Master Chorale from drawing a full house for a performance of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Completed in 1823, at the end of his life, this 80-minute mass is a work that the composer considered one of his greatest. And as Times classical music critic Mark Swed has noted in the past, it is radical and mysterious — a work that “grips the listener with the wondrous.”
After a weekend spent writing about the ways in which L.A.’s cultural sector has been responding to the dawn of the Trump administration — from street protests to symbolic actions — I was ready for some “otherworldly beauty.” Perhaps, even, a bit of religion.
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Sunday’s concert was conducted by the Master Chorale’s artistic director, Grant Gershon, and featured soprano Raquel Gonzalez, tenor Arnold Livingston Geis, mezzo soprano Allyson McHardy and baritone Rod Gilfrey as the principal soloists.
When Gershon took the podium, he paused to say a few words — admitting that it’s not something he generally does before a performance.
“But this is an extraordinary time,” he stated, “and an extraordinary weekend in this city” — a nod to the massive Women’s March that took place in downtown Los Angeles the day prior. This was greeted with hearty, determined applause.
Then Gershon proceeded to share a few thoughts about the music: The ways in which Beethoven investigated the power of the lyrics at the end of the Credo — the endlessly repeated phrase, “life of the world to come.”
And he pointed out the raw power of the Agnus Dei, the final movement, which is punctuated by a moment of great musical turmoil, “representing a world that is careening out of control.”
“The music reaches the brink of catastrophe and then subsides,” Gershon said. “The end of the music doesn’t feel like a resolution — it feels more like a question.”
Then he raised his baton and the first deep notes of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” began to rumble through the hall — a nearly 200 year-old-work that remains hauntingly, wondrously, achingly current.
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