Monday (1/7) on the Los Angeles Times blog Culture Monster, Mark Swed writes, “It’s a new year, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic celebrated with a new concerto, or at least a nearly new one. Tan Dun’s ‘The Tears of Nature,’ which features a whiz-bang percussionist and orchestra, is an L.A. Phil co-commission involving four orchestras. A radio orchestra in Lübeck, Germany, gave the world premiere last month. But though the concerto’s U.S. premiere Friday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall by percussionist Martin Grubinger and guest conductor Christoph Eschenbach was but a deuxième, the L.A. Phil’s very first notes of 2013 were still fresh and wondrous. … ‘The Tears of Nature’ has a little of everything in it. Actually, it has a lot of everything in it. Grubinger, a young Austrian percussionist, is an eager showman with a fabulous technique, and Tan has taken to him with seemingly huge appetite. The work was projected to be 27 minutes. Friday, it clocked in at 39. … Eschenbach followed the concerto with Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony … What made the Eschenbach’s performance distinctive was the way he tied Tchaikovsky into Tan by emphasizing the score’s dazzling use of instrumental color and the L.A. Phil’s dazzling virtuosity while remaining ever elegant.”
Posted January 9, 2013
