At the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel welcomes composer Ellen Reid on stage for a bow. Photo by Timothy Norris/Los Angeles Philharmonic.
In Tuesday’s (9/30) Los Angeles Times, Mark Swed writes that Los Angeles Philharmonic Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel “opened his farewell season with Ellen Reid’s ‘Earth Between Oceans,’ a joint commission bridging [the LA Phil and the New York Philharmonic]. Reid, who is herself bicoastal between L.A. and New York, narrates, through astonishing orchestral properties and powers, an environmental tale of her two cities…. Earth, air, water and fire are Reid’s subject matters, which she translates into four movements that cover a New York winter, an aerial approach to Manhattan’s noise and quiet, the Altadena and Pacific Palisades conflagrations, ending on a sort of surfboard ride over crashing blue waves. With the help of a wordless Los Angeles Master Chorale, Reid tells the story through ever-surprising instrumental evocation. Nothing, however, sounds like you might expect in Reid’s massive orchestral soundscape capable of holding a listener in tight grip for 30 minutes. Is that percussive pounding in earth the ground moving under our feet and the cello solo snowy Central Park? I don’t know how she does it, but I immediately bought into weird sounds from the chorus indicating something words can’t express.” Also on the program was Richard Strauss’ “Alpine” Symphony.
