Summertime Music Finds a Bell-Ringer
Yunchan Lim Chimes in at the Bowl, Downtown Also Raising the Curtain
By Donna Perlmutter
A news-breaker by any standard: He’s Yunchan Lim. That’s what you have to call the stellar musician who drew a record 12,000 to the Hollywood Bowl turnstiles.
Advance word was out. This 19-year-old nova took gold at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and none so young has ever garnered such accolades. A normal night on the Tues/Thurs classical agenda, even with starry eminences, could not find a lot more than 5,000 picnicking music lovers and often less.
So hats off, gentlemen -- as they say.
But kudos too, to what seemed like all of Koreatown, those who came to clamor for their Seoul countryman, along with many Asians outside that community. What’s more, the name Yunchan Lim may be lighting up the eyes of all presenters who can now say, “I had him on our stage way back in…” while the general public is still wondering who he is.
No worries. They will know. He is that stupendous a talent. And no, I’m not talking about the techno-keyboard wizardry department. Lim has got that cold.
What is exceptional about him is his musical maturity and beyond. In the case of the Rachmaninoff Three, a concerto that can leave tongues hanging out, he goes past bedazzlement, he enters the composer’s head, so akin to his particular emotive and feeling universe. He translates the piano writing to that orchestral language, to its contours of expression, in keeping with its impulses and motives.
With Lim, there is no virtuosity show for its own sake.
He’s got a natural phrasing style, eschewing any trace of mannerism. His wrists nearly lie on the keyboard. He can emit the most delicate lyric qualities with highest clarity or a rhythmic urgency and compulsion, no blurring allowed. He also plunges into the dense chords and intricate figurations, compelled by a rapid-fire velocity. They’re in hand, without exception.
All of it -- with the Philharmonic led by fellow South Korean Shiyeon Sung, an utterly engaged conductor in collaboration with Lim -- made for a stand-out night.
And, yes, the rest of summer time music is mostly resounding from those same hills. Lots more of it. From that usual place up Cahuenga Pass, the Hollywood Bowl. And we’ll get to it: the LA Philharmonic, including its starry eminence Gustavo Dudamel.
But first, there might still be a chance to see “Into the Woods” before its run ends at the Ahmanson Theatre, And here’s a good reason: it’s by Stephen Sondheim, you know, the Mozart of the American musical.
How’s that, you ask? Well, it’s not hard to draw the line between “Le nozze di Figaro” or “Così fan tutte” and Sondheim’s output -- all those light-hearted lines of passion that glide merrily along and underlie his characters’ ironic pangs, not just their shiny surfaces, all the patter that goes clicking ahead with so much wit. Not least, the many Grimm fairy-tale figures that materialize here, each with an onus to bear, each with yearnings for revenge or redemption, some with their innocence intact.
And do the faithful feast on the fun. Every first appearance by one of the characters finds the audience erupting in boisterous recognition, wild glee. The New York cast is terrific, the far-upstage chamber orchestra plays beguilingly and catching the whole shebang, if you still can, would be the thing to do.
But the Ahmanson is not alone among the busy Music Center emporia. There was also the utterly winsome Dutch National Ballet at the Pavilion. The company that choreographers like Hans van Manen call home brought a work that is quintessentially Los Angeles, more so, arguably, with its high Hispanic population, than any U.S. city can lay claim to: the bio-ballet “Frida.”
After all, its namesake is Frida Kahlo, the Mexican artist who succeeded as a woman in the male-dominated world of painters, and one whose physical and personal suffering inspired pathos, not to mention her tempestuous marriage to the noted muralist, her countryman Diego Riviera.
An evening-long narrative of this high drama easily attracts composers and choreographers, et al. It did exactly that for dance-maker Annabelle Lopez Ochoa who managed brilliantly to evoke its cultural mythology in her story-telling -- both the ensemble pieces and solos and duets for the lead characters lit up with a flicker of José Limon modernism combined discreetly with the carriage of ballet alignment and virtuosity.
What worked wonderfully as its basis was Peter Salem’s graphic complement of a score -- played live -- that turned melancholy or percussively angular as called for and Dieuweke van Reij’s designs, accented with totemic symbols, and, at celebratory moments, also drenched the stage with color. Call it a marvel of sophisticated collaboration, that is also quite moving.
As for outdoors events -- the LA Phil players came to the vast Bowl stage in their dinner-jacket whites, casually ready (or not) for those giant screen close-ups. The one missing visual in a number of concerts “under the stars” was the ever-animated image of the orchestra’s podium chief, Gustavo Dudamel. As though he might have been not ready for his close-up, we saw only one or two glimpses of him (while the camera guys avoided even a single close-up of Maestra Sung).
And how the primed audiences missed that! After all, Dudamel, this soon-to-be-prodigal son, boasts a famous allure, a bounty of facial expressions that cannot really be seen in the usual environs of a concert hall.
But the jumbotrons this summer are tirelessly screening rows of brass players, alternating with those of woodwinds, phalanxes of strings, etc. almost studiously avoiding the one reflecting all the written scores’ cues, the maestro with the message of everything that’s stored in the music.
Pshaw, as they used to say.
Opening night, which began a string of July concerts, sounded like the equivalent of that first pancake out of the pan. Engineers were not on their mark. But the ad hoc hoots from gladdened Bowl-enthusiasts caused mid-performance smiles on the face of pianist Javier Perianes -- and much appreciation for his performance in Falla’s “Nights in the Gardens of Spain.”
Concerts after that one greatly improved, and the fare, lots of 20th century Russian music, did not fail to include favorites like Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony, of course, and excerpts from his ballet “Romeo and Juliet.”
Summer rolls on. The crowds pack in to the mammoth showplace. And happiness, at least here, surrounds the gentle night breezes.