Claire Chase performs Felipe Lara’s Double Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Photo by Farah Souza/Los Angeles Philharmonic Association.
Conductor Susanna Mälkki’s program at the Los Angeles Philharmonic on “March 23 was a pairing of two fairly large servings of music—one new, the other old,” writes Richard S. Ginnell in Tuesday’s (3/28) San Francisco Classical Voice. “The new one, the U.S. premiere of Brazilian American composer Felipe Lara’s Double Concerto, was supposed to have been done here in April 2020, but the pandemic shutdown caused the … delay. The other one, Antonín Dvořák’s marvelously tuneful and invigorating Slavonic Dances, Op. 46, was like a visit from an old friend whom we may have never really known…. The Double Concerto was written specifically for … flutist Claire Chase, from the avant-garde classical scene, and double bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding, from jazz and a steadily growing number of other idioms. (Both are collaborative partners with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony.) They are given considerable leeway for improvisation, whether merely embellishing a tone, reacting to each other over a drone, or, in their final duo cadenza, flying off on their own…. Lara has Chase and Spalding meeting in a stylistic place where there is essential unity between classical and jazz extended techniques. Due to the improvisational element, no two performances will be exactly alike.”
