Notables Ranged From Adams to Zubin’s Nephew

It was a year like any other. But it was also the last year of the millennium, as we in the media, incorrect in our math, have defined it. Believe it or not, believe in it or not, no one has been able to escape it, classical music included.

1. Philharmonic fortunes. Among Esa-Pekka Salonen’s memorable performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic this year were a powerful, taut Brahms First Symphony and, at the Ojai Festival, the U.S. premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s riotous avant-garde extravaganza “Kraft.” There were, of course, other Salonen highlights. His artistic direction of the Ojai Festival in June was inspired, returning the festival to its venturesome roots and introducing his Finnish school chums (the ensemble Toimii) who performed with flabbergasting virtuosity (and bone-dry wit). Salonen continues to grow as conductor and composer; the orchestra plays extraordinarily well for him; and orchestra raiders from all over have their eye on him (this year, he fended off the Cleveland and the BBC orchestras).

But it was not an easy year for the Philharmonic or its music director. Managing director Willem Wijnbergen, whose surprise resignation in June still has not been explained, left behind a publicity nightmare, a significant deficit and a demoralized staff. However, the announcement in the fall that Deborah Borda, enticed away from the New York Philharmonic, will take the reigns in January has brought the expectation of stability’s return. But Salonen, alas, will not return for a while. In January, he begins a yearlong sabbatical from conducting.

Meanwhile, ground (or more accurately the roof of the temporary structure over the parking lot) was finally broken for Disney Hall, which, when finished in 2002 or 2003, will herald the real beginning of a new Philharmonic era.

2. David Robertson. The most spectacular, the most overdue and the most absurdly under-hyped debut of the year was Robertson’s. The conductor from Santa Monica, who has headed the prestigious Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris for nine seasons and who has just been named conductor of the year by Musical America, led his French group in the spring at UCLA and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the fall. The programs were fascinating, the music making was vibrant. Robertson also spoke on both occasions and proved quite a character--manic and funny, with insightful things to say. Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez and Robin Williams rolled into one.

3. Millennial dreams. If the imminent arrival of a new millennium is not a time to think big, when is? Although he made no mention of the calendar, John Adams used the occasion of a Los Angeles Philharmonic commission to write his largest orchestral piece to date. “Naive and Sentimental Music’ is a modern and massive symphony--Adams bigger and better, more exciting and more affecting, than ever before. Another major millennium epic was Philip Glass’ choral Fifth Symphony, a Beethoven Ninth-sized extravaganza commissioned by the Salzburg Festival that wowed dubious Austrians in August. Disney, similarly fired by millennium fever, commissioned not one but two massive choral symphonies for the New York Philharmonic by younger composers, Aaron Kernis and Michael Torke, both of whom proved daunted by the Disney imprimatur, if not the task.

4. Martha Argerich. Temperamental cult pianist Argerich made her first appearance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 18 years, and she played Chopin’s First Piano Concerto with an incendiary theatricality, profound poetic sensitivity and fervent intensity that left the audience in a state of utter awe.

5. Duke Ellington. You’ll surely find his name on all the century-celebrating jazz lists. This year was the centenary of Ellington’s birth, and the jazz world noted it duly with concerts, recordings and symposiums. But at a UCLA symposium, composer-conductor Gunther Schuller made it clear, if it wasn’t already, that jazz is too limiting a category for Ellington. He was one of the greats in American music, and American classical music wouldn’t be what it is today (Adams’ music, for instance) without his example.

6. “Duke Bluebeard.” Long Beach Opera seems, on the surface, to become more marginal with each passing year. Its season now is reduced to two productions over a June week at Cal State Long Beach. It does a poor job of attracting local, let alone national or international, attention. Its budget is shoestring, and there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of company loyalty among performers. And yet hardly a year goes by when it doesn’t, somehow, come up with something important and unique. This year it was Bartok’s opera, “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle,” in an astonishingly hip, interesting and original production with sets and video that might have walked out of this year’s Venice Biennale. It was a compelling musical performance as well. If only the art world knew about this. Or, for that matter, the opera world.

7. Another Mehta. Bejun Mehta did not exactly come out of nowhere. He is Zubin’s nephew. He was a famed boy soprano and, after voice change and college, an award-winning record producer. But, in fact, he did come out of nowhere as, of all things, the most arresting countertenor in a field that is quickly growing marvelous ones. Making his Southern California operatic debut in an otherwise all-student production of Handel’s “Rodelinda,” at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, Mehta displayed a wonderful stage presence and a voice to die for. Still in his late 20s, he is already one of the most transfixing singing actors around. A star has been born.

8. “Peony Pavilion.” Again! Last year we heralded this 400-year-old Chinese opera, newly imagined by composer Tan Dun and director Peter Sellars in a postmodern, multicultural production in Vienna. And we lamented that a complete 18-hour staging of the original opera, produced by the Lincoln Center Festival in Shanghai, was shanghaied by the local government authorities.

This year, both versions made it to America.

The Sellars-Tan was seen in Berkeley (and a recording of Tan’s score, titled “Bitter Love,” was released by Sony Classical), and it looked as 21st century as ever. Meanwhile, Lincoln Center finally got its marathon in June, with the magnificent original sets and costumes and whatever original performers it could entice out of China along with Chinese performers already in America. The result was a three-day theatrical immersion in a lost culture that came newly to life in this breathtaking work, which felt as modern as Robert Wilson and proved to be one of the great artistic experiences of our time.

9. Squeezing the Orange. Orange County has had its performing arts center for more than a decade now, and it has had the means to buy the performers it wants. Two years ago, it imported the Vienna Philharmonic; this year it was John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique for a cycle of the nine Beethoven symphonies. But this year also witnessed the birth of a new Orange spirit. The first Eclectic Orange Festival, produced by the Orange County Philharmonic Society, was, as was its intention, all over the map. But at its best it offered some startling music theater not to be found elsewhere in the Southland: the experimental opera as television talk show, “Dennis Cleveland,” by one of the most promising and innovative emerging American opera composers, Mikel Rouse; and the astonishingly inventive music that Henry Purcell wrote for Dryden’s “King Arthur” that was given a stunning performance by William Christie’s Les Arts Florissant.

The most unexpected Orange County occurrence, however, was the bolt of electricity shot through the seemingly moribund Opera Pacific by its new artistic director, conductor John DeMain. A provocative production of Wagner’s “Flying Dutchman” had the appearance of the start of something big.

10. “Bach 2000.” Next year is the Bach year--it marks the 250th anniversary of the death of the man many considered to be the most transcendent musician the world has known. You will not be able, nor should you try, to escape it. In fact, the Bach year arrived early with the release of “Bach 2000,” a suitcase-sized $900 box full of all of Bach’s music in consistently fine performances on 153 discs. The recordings come from the Teldec catalog and are on period instruments. Great names in the field are involved, including Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gustav Leonhardt and Ton Koopman. And while any set so large, relying on recordings made over three decades, cannot have a precise point of view, this set does come close. What a way to begin a millennium!