String Orchestra

Times might be tough for the record industry, but they're good for Stevie Blacke. The multi-instrumentalist has appeared on such hit songs as Pink's "Sober," Rihanna's "Rehab" and Hinder's "Without You" -- and tracks from Madonna, Beck and Snoop Dogg -- playing violin, cello, mandolin, lap steel, Dobro or more than a dozen other instruments, including the two-stringed Chinese Erhu.

Eduard Schmieder, conductor and orchestra trainer, likes to program transcriptions of works by name-brand composers -- and in the latest annual iPalpiti showcase at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Saturday night, he presented an entire evening of them.    It's not a fashionable idea in this age of relentless pursuit of “authenticity,” but that doesn't bother Schmieder. Nor should it, for he put together an imaginative, wide-ranging and, yes, witty combination of these things, played with smooth, expert brilliance by his young string players from around the globe.

The prospect of hearing the English String Orchestra in its first U.S. tour, led by principal guest conductor Sir Yehudi Menuhin, may have quickened some pulses, but the results Thursday night at Ambassador Auditorium were decisively lulling. Both the program and the playing seemed purposely designed to smooth and soothe, not to stimulate. To begin with, the ESO's mellow, top-heavy sound--violins outnumber violas, cellos and basses combined--communicates elegance more than emotion.

Since its premiere in 1824, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has been used to celebrate major historical events such as the opening of the United Nations and the fall of the Berlin Wall. But it works just as well for personal ones, including birthdays and anniversaries. Pacific Symphony conductor Carl St.Clair celebrates his 60th birthday this week, and John Alexander marks his 40th anniversary as artistic director of the Pacific Chorale. On Thursday, those  organizations gave a stirring account of the Ninth at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa.

UC San Diego composer Roger Reynolds was awarded this year's Pulitzer Prize in music Thursday, the second composer on the UCSD music faculty to receive the prestigious award in the past five years. Bernard Rands won a Pulitzer in 1984, when he taught at UCSD and concurrently held the post of composer-in-residence with the San Diego Symphony. Reynolds received the prize for his composition "Whispers Out of Time," a six-movement, 25-minute work for string orchestra.

It was, in many ways, a typical Wednesday night at the Hollywood Bowl. The audience included its usual percentage of revelers. The folks who fly the skies did so with their normal obliviousness to music below. The performers on stage were cleanly and decidedly amplified, with little residue from nature's acoustic. The program, as so many are at the Bowl, was built around a selection from the classical hit parade.

When musicians want to expand Beethoven's cycle of nine symphonies, they sometimes turn to his late string quartets on the grounds that there is more music in them than a mere quartet can extract. Usually it is the "Grosse Fuge," the huge, visionary original finale for the Opus 130 Quartet, that gets the blown-up string orchestra treatment. Camerata Nordica may be the first string orchestra to have recorded all five quartets (minus the replacement finale of Opus 130) for a three-CD box (Altara).

Friedheim Awards: William Kraft, the California composer who for many years was timpanist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, shared first-place honors for his "Veils and Variations" for horn and orchestra with Ralph Shapey's Concerto for cello, piano and string orchestra Sunday at the Friedheim Awards held at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

Camerata Romeu, a seven-player female string orchestra from Cuba, will appear on Jan. 25 at the Sundays at Four chamber series at the L.A. County Museum of Art, and Jan. 27 at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Chamber Music Society concert in Gindi Auditorium at the University of Judaism in Bel-Air. The free LACMA performance will be in the Leo S. Bing Theater at 4 p.m. The Gindi concert, at 8 p.m., will offer music by Baroque and 20th century Latin American composers. Tickets are $25.

The Young Artists International Laureates Festival, now in its ninth local summer residency, took over the air-conditioned Walt Disney Concert Hall on Saturday night -- a good place to be in such muggy weather. As always, the festival's flagship ensemble, the 22-piece string orchestra I Palpiti, was on display, staffed with a youthful, polyglot cast of often highly experienced players, which had already performed this program during its Taos, N.M., residency last week.

Times might be tough for the record industry, but they're good for Stevie Blacke. The multi-instrumentalist has appeared on such hit songs as Pink's "Sober," Rihanna's "Rehab" and Hinder's "Without You" -- and tracks from Madonna, Beck and Snoop Dogg -- playing violin, cello, mandolin, lap steel, Dobro or more than a dozen other instruments, including the two-stringed Chinese Erhu.

For the Munich Symphony Orchestra's first U.S. tour in 2005, Los Angeles was not on the itinerary -- a surprise, considering that the ensemble has recorded the scores for numerous films, including "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" and "The Silence of the Lambs." On Saturday, pianist-conductor Philippe Entremont made up for that omission at Royce Hall with a vigorous UCLA Live program of Wagner, Beethoven, Webern and Mendelssohn. In the concert opener, Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll," Entremont's shapely phrasing built naturally to impassioned climaxes, conjuring an otherworldly landscape.

When musicians want to expand Beethoven's cycle of nine symphonies, they sometimes turn to his late string quartets on the grounds that there is more music in them than a mere quartet can extract. Usually it is the "Grosse Fuge," the huge, visionary original finale for the Opus 130 Quartet, that gets the blown-up string orchestra treatment. Camerata Nordica may be the first string orchestra to have recorded all five quartets (minus the replacement finale of Opus 130) for a three-CD box (Altara).

The Young Artists International Laureates Festival, now in its ninth local summer residency, took over the air-conditioned Walt Disney Concert Hall on Saturday night -- a good place to be in such muggy weather. As always, the festival's flagship ensemble, the 22-piece string orchestra I Palpiti, was on display, staffed with a youthful, polyglot cast of often highly experienced players, which had already performed this program during its Taos, N.M., residency last week.

The Russian-born conductor Eduard Schmieder knows how to showcase and assist young musicians. For eight years, he has brought competition-winning players -- mostly in their 20s -- from around the world to Los Angeles through his International Laureates Music Festivals. On Saturday, the eighth festival culminated in a four-part, mostly string program at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The meaty piece was Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" Quartet as arranged for string orchestra by Gustav Mahler.

And now there's Nuvi, the next Mehta. Cousin of Zubin, son of pianist Dady, brother of countertenor Bejun, the youngest member of the Mehta musical dynasty has been making a name for himself in the San Diego area as a violinist (he performs in the San Diego Symphony), conductor, stage director, educator and even occasional performer in musical comedy. He is also music director of two regional orchestras (the Nova Vista Symphony in Sunnyvale, Calif.

They play in an oddly alluring performance space--a ravine deep within Griffith Park, with two sloping hillsides and a narrow plateau divided by a rocky dry brook and partially shaded by several trees. They draw a remarkably diverse audience--all ages and ethnic groups, a cross-section of those who visit this oasis in our sadly park-poor city. They are, alas, dryly amplified.

Taking the helm of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for the first time in Orange County Thursday night, Jeffrey Kahane showed a classicist's attention to clarity by elucidating elements of balance, line and detail. But much of the roster at the Irvine Barclay Theatre seemed chosen to emphasize the experience of chamber music as the combined strengths of individuals.

What heady prospects. What challenging choices. Two renowned German orchestras are playing in the Southland at the same time. More than that, both are playing the same work, Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony. The Berlin Philharmonic was in Costa Mesa and the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig was in Cerritos. Unfortunately, the Leipzigers, under the direction of Herbert Blomstedt, presented Beethoven as a museum piece Tuesday in the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

It may not be written in stone, but almost everyone understands one of today's critical strictures: "Thou shalt not transcribe." Leopold Stokowski's once-popular orchestrations of Bach organ works, for instance, are now regarded as reflecting the taste of an earlier, less-sophisticated age than ours. But what do we say when the composers decide to rescore one of their works? The saintly Bach did it all the time.