PROKOFIEV TO CLOSE KALEIDOSCOPE’S THIRD SEASON

BY RYAN LUÉVANO

Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra is Los Angeles’ newest orchestra that braves new works and classics too. The orchestra was formed as a conductorless ensemble to foster a collaborative process for the musicians without the autocracy of a conductor. The ensemble seeks to make music available to all the communities of Los Angeles with their ‘pay what you can’ model of tickets and the outreach to homeless shelters and low income areas. Just this week, the group closed its third season with the west coast premiere of Will Healy’s Kolmanskop, Steven Stucky’s Partita-Pastorale after J.S.B. and the most ambitious of the three: Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 that boasts an orchestra of over sixty musicians. The performances took place at the Glendale City Church and the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica.

Will Healy and Brian Lauritzen.

The program was preceded with a pre-concert lecture by KUSC’s Brian Lauritzen who provided context and explanatory notes for the pieces on the program. Audiences also heard from composer Will Healy who shared that his piece is a musical depiction of what he saw while visiting Kolmanskop (a ghost town in the Namib desert in southern Namibia). Healy mentioned that his composition highlights three aspects from the town of Kolmanskop. The first movement “Dunes” represents the waves of the dunes; the second movement “Dust Dances” is the decay symbolized by different layers of music piled on top of each other culminating in a “mound of sound”; and the final movement “Time Lapse” is a continuous depiction of the town being enveloped by sand.

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Stucky’s Partita-Pastorale, the only true ‘chamber’ piece of the evening, featured a sextet that consisted of clarinet, two violins, viola, cello and piano. Stucky’s composition was a hybrid of genres mixing modernist music with Baroque quotations and forms. The struggle of darkness and light was apparent as the performers navigated through the darkness to find glimmers of light heard in the Bach quotations.

The piece was elegantly performed by the sextet and, although the shortest piece in the concert, was one of the most powerful. This was not necessarily due to the power of the music, but more to the focus and rawness exhibited by watching this small group making eye contact to communicate throughout the piece, something that was lost in the lager pieces on the second half of the program.

Kolmanskop calls for forces similar to the upcoming Prokofiev symphony with one notable difference: an offstage solo violin in the first movement. Reina Inui played the solo violin part from the upstairs choir loft offering fierce dialogue with the orchestra. Healy successfully captured the vastness and bareness of the Namib desert in the first movement with open chords and sweeping musical gestures. The second movement explodes with color and motion with clever interplay of strings, brass and woodwinds. In the second half of the movement, high scurrying passages in the violins were juxtaposed with slow waves in the low strings and brass, transporting audiences to this dusty landscape.

The dilemma with some contemporary music about landscape is that it begs for visual imagery. Here, even Healy’s picturesque soundscapes did wane occasionally; pictures from the location shown simultaneously would have easily filled the void. Additionally, Glendale City Church’s facilities, although beautiful, made it necessary for the orchestra to keep the lights on during the latter performances. This quickly pulled the focus away from the music providing temptation for patrons to move about and reach for their cell phones.

Tackling Prokofiev’s famous Fifth Symphony is no easy undertaking for any orchestra. The piece is a 55-minute weighty musical depiction of Soviet Union in the 1940s; as Prokofiev stated, “a hymn to a free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit”. Prokofiev’s symphony is chock full of Prokofievian themes that exude optimism with hints of despair woven into the belly of the work—this duality defines the sound from movement to movement.

The orchestra aptly played through the first three movements, but seemed to be saving everything for the final movement. When this movement arrived it was a gallop of Russian force and spirit with many featured soloist and sections. Flutist Catherine Baker, oboist Robert Walker and E-flat clarinetist Eric Abramovitz were the brightest spots in the woodwind section whose solos glittered like silver catching light. The brass and second violins also displayed their strength as a section; the violins with their various robust agitato passages, and the brass with their bold statements of Prokofiev’s thematic material—a people’s victory indeed.

Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra is making monumental strides in its support of classical music and its unique way of making music come alive—certainly a concert experience that anyone will enjoy. Visit their website to find out what their next season has to offer: www.kco.la