GUSTAVO DUDAMELLOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC ADAMS CITY NOIR From The Inaugural Concert DG CONCERTS Live from WaltDisneyConcertHall About the PROGRAM Los Angeles Philharmonic City Noir tain sassy, savvy energy. It was, among other Gustavo Dudamel, conductor John Adams things, a Front Page kind of town where life was lived by many on the edge, and that made Composed: 2009 for good copy and good film noir.” Length: c. 30 minutes Those images and their surrounding aura Performed live in Walt Disney Concert Hall Orchestration: 3 flutes (3rd = piccolo), piccolo whetted my appetite for an orchestral work October 8, 2009 2, 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets (3rd = that, while not necessarily referring to the bass clarinet 2), bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, soundtracks of those films, might nevertheless contrabassoon, alto saxophone, 6 horns, 4 evoke a similar mood and feeling tone of the trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percus- era. I was also stimulated by the notion that ADAMS City Noir (world premiere) sion (temple block, bongos, castanets, chimes, there indeed exists a bona fide genre of jazz- (commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Gustavo Dudamel, Music Director, clave, conga, cowbell, crotales, suspended inflected symphonic music, a fundamentally generously underwritten by Lenore and Bernard Greenberg; cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, glockenspiel, American orchestral style and tradition that JOHN London Symphony Orchestra in association with Cité de la Musique-Salle Pleyel; tuned gongs, jazz kit, marimba, vibraphone, goes as back as far as the early 1920s (although, The Eduard van Beinum Foundation at the request of the ZaterdagMatinee, tambourine, tam tams, timbale, tom toms, tri- truth to tell, it was a Frenchman, Darius Mil- the Dutch Radio Concert Series in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam; ADAMS and by Toronto Symphony Orchestra) angle, xylophone), piano, celesta, 2 harps, and haud, who was the first to realize its potential strings with his 1923 ballet La création du monde, a Born: 1947, Worcester, Massachusetts year before Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue pre- A The City and its Double First Los Angeles Philharmonic performance miered in New York). “The best American classical music is very B The Song is for You (world premiere) The music of City Noir is in the form of a open, very embracing.” C Boulevard Night 30-minute symphony. The formal and expres- Gustavo Dudamel’s first appointment of his sive weight of its three movements is distrib- One of Minimalism’s shaping spirits, John own as Music Director Designate of the Los An- uted in pockets of high energy that are nested Adams is a composer of distinctive stylistic geles Philharmonic was to name John Adams to among areas of a more leisurely — one could élan. He made an early decision to break with the new position of Creative Chair. Adams has even say “cinematic” — lyricism. The first move- the modernist aesthetic prevailing in post-war a long and productive history with the orches- ment, “The City and its Double,” opens with a Europe and U.S. academia, launching a vigorous tra, going back to 1981. Dedicated to Philhar- brief, powerful “wide screen” panorama that exploration of Minimalism infused with Amer- monic President Deborah Borda “in celebration gives way to a murmuring dialog between the ican vernacular influences. Adams’ later music of a long friendship,” City Noir is the final panel double bass pizzicato and the scurrying figures expands these elements with long-limbed in a triptych of orchestral works that “have as in the woodwinds and keyboards. The steady polyphony, chromaticism, and his “earbox” their theme the California experience, its land- tick of a jazz drummer impels this tense and technique of modal transposition. He won the scape, and its culture,” Adams says. The other nervous activity forward — a late-hour empty Grawemeyer Award in 1995 for his Violin Con- two are El Dorado (commissioned by the San street scene, if you like. After a broad and lyri- certo and was named Composer of the Year in Francisco Symphony) and The Dharma at Big cal melodic passage in the strings, the original 1997 by Musical America. Adams is also an ac- Sur (a violin concerto commissioned by the scorrevole movement returns, charged with in- tive and esteemed conductor. He has won Los Angeles Philharmonic for one of the Walt creasingly insistent impulse and building up three Grammy awards for Best Contemporary Disney Concert Hall inaugural galas in 2003). steam until it peaks with a full-throttle orches- Composition, and a Pulitzer Prize for On the The composer has written the following tral tutti. A surging melody in the horns and cel- Transmigration of Souls. note about City Noir: los punctuated by jabbing brass “bullets” brings the movement to a nearly chaotic climax before Further listening: Audio Recording: City Noir was first suggested by my read- it suddenly collapses into shards and frag- Phrygian Gates (1977) ൿ 2010 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg A UNIVERSAL MUSIC COMPANY ing the so-called “Dream” books by Kevin Starr, ments, a sudden stasis that ushers in the sec- Gloria Cheng, piano (Telarc) Producer: Christopher Alder a brilliantly imagined, multi-volume cultural ond movement. Engineers: Peter Hecker, Fred Vogler, Tim Boot Nixon in China (opera, 1987) Editing / Mastering: Christopher Alder, Fred Vogler, Tim Boot, Scott Sedillo and social history of California. In the “Black The title, “The City and its Double,” is a Audio Crew: Kevin Wapner, Randy Piotroski Dahlia” chapter of his Embattled Dreams vol- backward glance to the French playwright An- Page, Maddalena, Sylvan, Orchestra of Cover Photo: Ꭿ Mathew Imaging / Los Angeles Philharmonic · Cover Design: Philipp Starke ume, Starr chronicles the tenor and milieu of tonin Artaud, who in his writings is said to St. Luke’s, Edo De Waart (Nonesuch) Photos: Ꭿ Deborah O’Grady (Adams); Ꭿ Chris Christodoulou (Dudamel); Ꭿ Mathew Imaging (orchestra) the late ’40s and early ’50s as it was expressed have “opposed the vitality of the viewer’s sen- in the sensational journalism of the era and in sual experience against [a conventional con- Chamber Symphony (1991) the dark, eerie chiaroscuro of the Hollywood cept of] theater as a contrived literary form.” London Sinfonietta, Adams (Nonesuch) films that have come to define the period sen- Hence my “city” can be imagined not just as a Program notes Ꭿ Los Angeles Philharmonic Association LAPhil.com sibility for us: geographic place or even as a social nexus, but “...the underside of home-front and post- rather as a source of inexhaustible sensual ex- war Los Angeles stood revealed. Still, for all its perience. As a child watching the early days of shoddiness, the City of Angels possessed a cer- television I remember well the program that al- 2 ADAMS LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC ADAMS LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC 2 About the ARTISTS ways ended with the familiar tag line, “There are Acclaimed worldwide as one of the most exciting and compelling con- His second recording with the SBYO, Mahler Symphony No. 5, was released eight million stories in the Naked City. This has ductors of our time, GUSTAVO DUDAMEL begins his tenure as Music Di- in May 2007, and was chosen as the only classical album on iTunes’ “Next been one.” rector of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Fall 2009, while continuing as Big Thing.” Released in May 2008, Dudamel’s third album with the Simón As a relief to the frenzy of the first move- Music Director of the Gothenburg Symphony. Dudamel also enters his Bolívar Youth Orchestra was FIESTA, featuring Latin-American works. In ment’s ending, “The Song is for You” takes its eleventh year as Music Director of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of March 2009, Deutsche Grammophon released Dudamel’s most recent time assembling itself. Gradually a melodic pro- Venezuela. His infectious energy and exceptional artistry have made him recording with the SBYO, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 and Francesca da file in the solo alto sax emerges from the sur- one of the most sought-after conductors by orchestras and opera com- Rimini. His DVDs include the 2008 release of The Promise of Music, a doc- rounding pools of chromatically tinted panies around the world. umentary and concert with the Simón sonorities. The melody yearns toward but keeps Following guest appearances with Bolívar Youth Orchestra; Birthday Con- retreating from the archetypal “blue” note. But the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin cert for Pope Benedict XVI released in eventually the song finds full bloom in the voice Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel’s inau- 2007; and the April 2009 DVD, Live from of the solo trombone, a “talking” solo, in the man- gural 2009/10 season as Los Angeles Salzburg, featuring performances of ner of the great Ellington soloists Lawrence Philharmonic Music Director begins on Mussorgsky / Ravel’s Pictures at an Ex- Brown and Britt Woodman (both, fittingly October 3 with ¡Bienvenido Gustavo! hibition and Beethoven’s Triple Con- enough, Angelenos). The trombone music picks This free, day-long musical celebration certo with Martha Argerich, Renaud up motion and launches a brief passage of vio- at the Hollywood Bowl for the Los and Gautier Capuçon, and the SBYO. On lent, centripetal energy, all focused on a short ob- Angeles community culminates with the iTunes front, Deutsche Gram- sessive idea first stated by the sax. Once spent of Dudamel leading the Los Angeles Phil- mophon has released Gustavo Dudamel its fuel, the movement returns to the quiet open- harmonic in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. and the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s ing music, ending with pensive solos by the On October 8, 2009, Dudamel leads the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique and principal horn and viola. Los Angeles Philharmonic in the inau- Bartók Concerto for Orchestra.