This season, which marked the heralded London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO)‘s first American tour in ten years led by its Principal Conductor Edward Gardner, had as an artistic high point an October 10, concert in Northridge, California!
Sandwiched into four California stops (Davis, Costa Mesa, Santa Barbara), the LPO graced our beautiful sound-worthy hall at The Soraya with the swelling timbre of an orchestre du moment. The Soraya, which in the music department is no slouch (its programming is rich in every genre from popular to jazz to vocal to classical), was filled with music bewitchingly articulate and delightful in every cadence of the Londoners’ clearly limitless range.
The major patrons were seated in the orchestra section. That included Los Angeles arts VIPs Caroline Colburn Grigor and Soraya Nazarian — the latter whose family gift of $17 million led to California State University / Northridge’s renaming the hall to Younes and Soraya Performing Arts Center–shortened as The Soraya.
Yes, schmoozing always happens in those front-row seats — there to see and be seen. My press cohorts and cronies sit in the orchestra section, too, on the aisle — a tradition allowing, yes, good sightlines but also enabling critics to rush to the office to craft overnight reviews. The Soraya’s Executive and Artistic Director Thor Steingraber has his select seat, right where the house makes its gentle upward rise, giving off a prime view. It’s a plum if he invites you to be his seatmate.
So you’d think I’d been banished. Dead wrong! I *asked* to sit upstairs as I love the experience on high. As the miraculously balanced music rose to the rafters, we put on our catcher’s mitts to capture its sonic vibes. Front-row balcony, second tier, is what I’m talking about: completely unobstructed both sight and sound.
I am a purist. I don’t want to see the guy in the row in front of me turn the pages of his program or whisper to his wife. It interrupts my self-imposed coma. My fussiness goes rewarded. I find sparse moments aside from hearing great classical music in which I breathe deeply, completely relax, give over to a journey untethered in time and space.
Luis Luque, Luque Photography
The program had more than enough beef. A tasty amuse-bouche, a contemporary work by Cuban composer Tania León, Raíces (Origins), was nearly a Latin-flavored “Let’s meet the orchestra,” as it toured from one instrumental section to the next. A friend heard the influence of Milhaud, I thought I heard Gershwin, which is all in the family, as Gershwin was so influenced by both French and Cuban composers. A work unknown to me, Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, featured Randall Goosby, a rising violin superstar who vanquished its punishing third-section pizzicati at warp speed. Then he played an encore by the African American composer, Coleridge Taylor Perkinson. Louisiana Blues Strut (A Cakewalk) had a kind of “hitch your wagon and ramble down a country road” feel. The evening’s full second half was devoted to the Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, at turns blustery, at turns hushed, and, throughout, given clarity and PUNCH by Gardner.
This big British band, praised for its “visceral intensity, bold character and weighty textures” (so wrote the New York Times), so marvelous (in its second visit!) at The Soraya.