Guest conductor brings together Israel, Korea and Finland in one concert

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By Truman C. Wang
4/8/2023

Tonight, LA Phil welcomed guest conductor Osmo Vänskä from Finland.  The concert program reflects Vänskä’s work in the countries of Israel and South Korea.  Vänskä was music director of the Minnesota Orchestra for 19 years and 3 years with Korea’s Seoul Phlharmonic. 

In the Brahms First Piano Concerto, Inon Barnatan, from Tel Aviv, was the soloist.  His playing was active and energetic, a most enjoyable performance.  The piano tone was slender and warm; the interpretation did not quite have the big swagger of a heaven-storming Brahmsian; instead, it was focused and sensitive like chamber music in the many dialogs between the soloist and the brass and woodwinds.  Whether this was anyone’s ideal reading is arguable, but it was a refreshing take on an old warhorse.  For encore, Mr. Barnatan played Bach-Petri’s Sheep May Safely Graze, aptly on this Easter weekend, in one long singing line of great delicacy.

Donghoon Shin is a 40-year-old Korean composer.  His musical setting of W. B. Yeats’ dystopian poem “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen” mourns the loss of beautiful and lovely things following a cataclysmic world event (the Great War for Yeats, the Covid pandemic for Shin).   Musically, Shin pays homage to Mahler and Berg in the form of a huge orchestra, and a march and a waltz that are transfigured harmonically and dynamically into a thing of horror beyond redemption, befitting the work’s title Upon His Ghostly Solitude (quote from the poem’s first half).  The 17-minute work is an new LA Phil commission and, based on the sheer scale and commitment of the performance, they certainly got their money’s worth. 

The LA Phil is without doubt a great Sibelius orchestra that will make any conductor’s job easy.  That tonight a Finn was on the podium was an added bonus.  The balanced sound of the brass and woodwinds were outstanding.  Vänskä gave an impressive, ample and well-shaped performance of the Sibelius Third.  Next week, more Brahms to celebrate the composer’s 190th birthday, Rafael Payare, a Dudamel protégé, will guest conduct.

Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.