(Sian Roper / For The Times)
11 fall classical music highlights
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Although Gustavo Dudamel will only be in Los Angeles slightly less than three weeks this fall to open his historic final season as Los Angeles Philharmonic music and artistic director, the L.A. Phil’s influence looms large and wide throughout the season. Former Dudamel fellows, for instance, join the fall highlights. That includes Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare, who has brilliantly revived the San Diego Symphony, and Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, now music director of the famed Philharmonia Orchestra in London.
Fire season and the fall arts have always collided, but with worsening climate change that becomes ever more evident, and this fall the environment will be on musical minds, beginning with Dudamel premiering Ellen Reid’s “Earth Between Oceans” and followed by major climatic-centric premieres from the Philharmonia and Los Angeles Master Chorale.
The earliest remembered composer goes back to the 12th century, yet Hildegard von Bingen, whose numinous rapport with her environment feels urgently supernatural today, is the subject of a new opera Los Angeles Opera is importing. Hildegard’s music remains so relevant and meaningful that the avant-garde guitarist Jiji will begin her recital at the Nimoy with her arrangement of Hildegard’s music for electric guitar.
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Gustavo Dudamel begins his final season with the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Downtown L.A. Show
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
“Gracias Gustavo,” Gustavo Dudamel’s farewell season as Los Angeles Philharmonic music and artistic director, begins as all his 17 seasons in Walt Disney Concert Hall have begun — with a world premiere. Ellen Reid’s “Earth Between Oceans,” a co-commission between the L.A. Phil and New York Philharmonic (which Dudamel takes over in 2026), evoking nature’s command of the four elements (earth, air, fire and water) as they operate in both cities. In our case, that involves contending with fires and our swelling oceans but also the promise of a future of unity through celebration of our multicultural communities. This, of course, is just the beginning of yearlong Dudamania in L.A. The opening program also includes Richard Strauss’ nature-saturated “Alpine Symphony,” followed, in the next two weeks, by further epic programs featuring Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” Mahler’s Second Symphony (“Resurrection”) and Dudamel’s final L.A. Phil gala: “Gustavo’s Fiesta.”
Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall
When: Sept. 25-28
Price: $64-$242
Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall
When: Sept. 25-28
Price: $64-$242
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Daniil Trifonov
Aliso Viejo Show
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
One of the most impressive pianists of his generation, the 34-year-old Daniil Trifonov, who starred in a Rachmaninoff week with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in August, opens the Soka Performing Arts fall series at Soka University in Aliso Viejo with a recital program that features seldom heard solo piano works by three early 20th century Russian composers — Taneyev, Prokofiev and Myaskovsky — along with a Schumann sonata. The Russian pianist also opens the fall seasons of La Jolla Music Society with solo recitals at the Baker-Baum Concert Hall — which, like Soka, boasts superb acoustics by Yasuhisa Toyota — with two programs (Sept. 24 and 25) and UC Santa Barbara’s Arts & Lectures at Campbell Hall (Sept. 30). In the meantime, Deutsche Grammophon has just released a stunning new Trifonov recording of overlooked, intimate solo piano works by Tchaikovsky.
Where: Soka University Concert Hall
When: Sept. 26
Price: $50-$105
Where: Soka University Concert Hall
When: Sept. 26
Price: $50-$105
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San Diego Symphony stages Ravel's 'The Child and the Magical Spells'
San Diego Show
(From Gary Payne)
San Diego Symphony music director Rafael Payare opens his orchestra’s second season in the brilliantly renovated Jacobs Music Center by staging Ravel’s one-act opera, “The Child and the Magical Spells” (commonly known by its French title, “L’enfant et les sortileges”). A kind of French “Alice Wonderland,” this is the most enchanted work by a composer for whom enchantment was bedazzling second nature. The stellar cast is headed by mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and soprano Liv Redpath. The stage director is by the orchestra’s creative consultant, Gerard McBurney, who recently created for Esa-Pekka Salonen a new version of Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina,” which was the hit of this year’s Salzburg Easter Festival.
Where: Jacobs Music Center
When: Oct. 3 and 5
Price: TBA
Where: Jacobs Music Center
When: Oct. 3 and 5
Price: TBA
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Jiji: 'Classical Goes Electric'
Santa Monica Show
(BroadStage)
The Korean guitarist and composer who goes by Jiji Guitar and is a member of the L.A. new music collective Wild Up exchanges her acoustic guitar for electric in a solo recital program that ranges across centuries as part of the endearing Sunday morning series at BroadStage (bagels and cream cheese included). Jiji begins with an arrangement of a vocal piece by the mystical 12th century abbess Hildegard von Bingen, who happens to be the subject of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s new opera, “Hildegard,” that L.A. Opera presents a month later. Elsewhere on the program, the guitarist electrifies a neglected Baroque composer, Claudia Sessa (all women Baroque composers suffer obscurity), with Max Richter and new music including neglected electronic music pioneer Laurie Spiegel.
When: Oct. 5
Where: The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage
Price: $55
When: Oct. 5
Where: The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage
Price: $55
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Alexander Shelley conducts Pacific Symphony
Costa Mesa Show
(Curtis Perry)
At 45, the British conductor Alexander Shelley has a seemingly full and far-fledged plate: music director of the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa; principal associate conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London; and artistic and music director of Artis-Naples and the Naples Philharmonic in Florida. Next year, the plate becomes fuller and further-fledged when he becomes music director of the Pacific Symphony. This fall, however, Shelley makes his debut as music director designate by showcasing works bursting with color — Mongomery’s “Starburst”; Arturo Márquez’s “Concert for Guitar Mystical and Profane” with Pablo Sáinz-Villegas as soloist; and Rimsky Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.” Shelley returns in November with Ravel’s glorious ballet score “Daphnis and Chloe,” the perfect enchantment complement to San Diego Symphony’s “L’Enfant,” for wrapping up the Ravel year, the 150th anniversary of the French composer’s birth having been in March.
When: Oct. 16-18
Where: Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall
Price: $36-$252
When: Oct. 16-18
Where: Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall
Price: $36-$252
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Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Vikingur Ólafsson join the Philharmonia Orchestra
Costa Mesa Show
(Timothy Norris / Los Angeles Philharmonic)
It’s been almost a decade since Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, a former Dudamel Fellow at the L.A. Phil, last returned to Southern California as a guest conductor of the L.A. Phil. In the meantime, though, he’s been busily attracting attention in London as principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra (having succeeded Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2021). For his first local appearance with the Philharmonia, he is joined by the stellar Icelandic pianist Vikingur Ólafsson in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. The program also includes the local premiere of a new score meant to awaken environmental awareness, popular Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz’s “Si el Oxígeno Fuera Verde” (If Oxygen Were Green), along with Shostakovich‘s Fifth Symphony. Shortly after fall, Ólafsson heads back to Disney in January as soloist with the L.A. Phil for John Adams’ latest piano concerto, “After the Fall.”
When: Oct. 21
Where: Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall
Price: $41-$121
When: Oct. 21
Where: Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall
Price: $41-$121
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Louise Farrenc's forgotten Symphony No. 2
Downtown L.A. Show
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(Brian Feinzimer for LACO)
When a talented 19th century French pianist named Louise Farrenc became tired of giving concerts accompanying her flutist husband, she founded Éditions Farrenc in Paris, which became one of the country’s leading music publishing houses. She also gained a smallish reputation as a composer of mainly salon pieces for piano. But she had far greater ambitions nearly impossible for a woman at that time to realize. Farrenc composed three large-scale symphonies that are only now, more than a century after her death in 1875, being noticed. Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s music director, Jaime Martín, is one of her champions, and he is pairing Farrenc’s impressive Schumann-esque Second Symphony, written in 1845, with Brahms’ First Piano Concerto, featuring the dauntingly virtuoso pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin. The program repeats Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Wallis.
When: Oct. 25
Where: Zipper Concert Hall
Price: $49-$124
When: Oct. 25
Where: Zipper Concert Hall
Price: $49-$124
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Sarah Kirkland Snider's 'Hildegard'
Beverly Hills Show
(From Sarah Kirkland Snider)
With her new opera, “Hildegard,” which will have its West Coast premiere as part of Los Angeles Opera’s Off-Grand series, Sarah Kirkland Snider joins a broad range of artists enraptured by the earliest remembered composer, Hildegard von Bingen. Her otherworldly sacred vocal music, along with her visionary writing, has made the 12th century mystic philosopher, medical doctor, natural historian and Benedictine abbess a source of late 20th and 21st century fascination. She shows up in texts about gardening, numinous Christianity and the Kabbalah. David Lynch was not the only filmaker obsessed with the abbess. Her 900th birthday in 1998 was observed by a feminist composer and singer collective, Hildegurls, by inventively staging Hildegard’s luminous “Ordo Virtutum.” Now it is Snider’s turn, assisted by Elkhanah Pulitzer, for a full-scale Hildegard opera. And it just so happens that L.A. Opera will open its season with a production of “West Side Story” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion directed by Francesca Zambello, who had also planned a staged production of “Ordo Virtutum” in Florida that fell victim to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Where: The Wallis
When: Nov. 5-9
Price: $59-$166
Where: The Wallis
When: Nov. 5-9
Price: $59-$166
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POP rejuvenates Auber's 'Fra Diavolo'
Highland Park Show
(From Pacific Opera Project)
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber’s funny, tuneful, gang-can’t-shoot-straight, long-out-of-fashion early 19th century comic French opera, “Fra Diavolo” is just the kind of thing on which Pacific Opera Project (POP) has made its irrepressibly wackier-than-thou reputation. While the company performs a range of operas, serious and not-so-serious, here and there (including Descanso Gardens and Forest Lawn), its heart is at the Ebell, a historic Highland Park club, where you sit at tables with wine and hors d’oeuvres, surrounded by dazzling singers, goofy costumes and sets, and the intoxicating hokum that the company’s irrepressible founder and director, Josh Shaw, comes up with.
Where: The Highland Park Ebell
When: Nov. 7-16
Price: $15-$35 (traditional seating); $95-$120 (table for two); $180-$230 (table for four)
Where: The Highland Park Ebell
When: Nov. 7-16
Price: $15-$35 (traditional seating); $95-$120 (table for two); $180-$230 (table for four)
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Wild Up's 'What I Call Sound'
Westwood Show
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Wild Up, L.A.’s transformative new music chamber orchestra and collective, was founded 15 years ago by Christopher Rountree with a seemingly limitless collection of inventive ideas for bringing classical music into the 21st century and beyond. This fall it begins a new series at the Nimoy, home of UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, beginning with “What I Call Sound,” a look at the historic influence L.A. jazz has had on new music of all sorts. Given that Wild Up is comprised of accomplished improvisers and composers, it is ideally suited to follow the course of the avant-garde jazz scene from Eric Dolphy in the late 1950s to such current leading figures as Anthony Braxton. Wild Up musicians, moreover, will be turning up this season around town in solo programs at Sierra Madre Playhouse as well as Jiji’s BroadStage gig (see above).
Where: The Nimoy
When: Nov. 8
Price: $38.08 - $48.67
Where: The Nimoy
When: Nov. 8
Price: $38.08 - $48.67
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'before and after nature'
Downtown L.A. Show
(Jamie Phan / Los Angeles Master Chorale)
The fall’s third and largest major environment-themed work is David Lang’s “before and after nature,” an evening-length score that was commissioned by the Los Angeles Master Chorale and had its premiere in the spring at Stanford University in conjunction with the Doerr School of Sustainability. Here, Lang explores, in his almost Hildegard-like glowing vocal writing, the human relationship with a nature that doesn’t need us, or want us, yet we insist on being the center of everything and making an inevitable mess of it. The instrumental ensemble is Bang on a Can All-Stars (Lang having been a founder of the New York new music institution, Bang on a Can). The performance includes a video component by Tal Rosner, and Grant Gershon conducts.
Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall
When: Nov. 16
Price: $59-$199
Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall
When: Nov. 16
Price: $59-$199
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