A well-meaning, mostly well-played ramble. How else to describe the first of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s two-night celebration of William Grant Still and the music of African-American composers? So much was good, yet so much left the bitter sting of an aftertaste which lingered long after the music faded. Not that the music last Saturday night had anything to do with that. Duke Ellington’s name needs no introduction, but his ambitions as classical tone-poet remain mostly unknown and little appreciated. Presented in orchestral garb courtesy of one-time New York Philharmonic assistant conductor Maurice Peress, the harmonic opulence and rhythmic drive of Ellington’s music permits it a smooth transition from big band to symphony orchestra.
The “Come Sunday” number from his Black, Brown, and Beige – its lyrics recited rather than sung by Charlotte Blake Alston – handsomely displayed the elegance with which his pen could sculpt the music that poured forth from it. Eloquence, too, was at the ready in his window into the African-American experience. This was music of dignified strength, free of sentimentality. Ellington's quasi-Lisztian Harlem was an eruption of textures and dances, each piling atop the other in a vertiginous array of musical sketches depicting the eponymous neighborhood, culminating in a percussion showdown that was Chick Webb-meets-Tito Puente.
William Grant Still’s talent was of a quieter sort, but no less distinguished, with important contributions made to the fields of concert and film music. His Symphony no. 1, nicknamed the “Afro-American”, is a graceful, lyrical score firmly in the tradition of Edward MacDowell and George Whitefield Chadwick. If not indicative of the original voice he would later cultivate, the work is an attractive one rich in melody, nonetheless.
It was the performance of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, however, which proved unsettling as it was unsatisfying. The spell of this imaginative program was shattered by this momentary tone-deafness, thereby revealing ideological contradictions which unintentionally subverted the celebratory nature of these concerts. A disappointingly mediocre performance by soloist Aaron Diehl only aggravated an already troubling situation. Least concerning was his embroidering of the work’s piano part with various improvisations, an increasingly common (if not accurate) performance option in recent decades.
“One personalizes [performances],” pianist Raymond Lewenthal once confided about his own musical alterations. “Though when I make these additions, I make the music more difficult, not simpler.” Diehl’s rhapsodizing upon the Rhapsody (as well as his slow tempi), instead, were smokescreens which obscured his significant reduction of the score’s technical challenges. It was the difference between watching a basketball pro use the utmost of their physical prowess to score and another who simply uses a cherry picker. Conductor Thomas Wilkins’ direction throughout was taut and incisive.
What really disappointed then had nothing to do with the music itself and everything to do with the implications of last weekend’s programs. Classical music is often accused of being the exclusive domain of “dead white men” – an oft-repeated falsehood apparently believed even by some of the professionals within the Los Angeles Philharmonic itself. It can also readily be disproved by anybody who has a clue about how non-whites played a crucial role in the development of the genre, especially from the 20th century on. Yet the listener is faced with the incongruous situation of this musical institution preaching diversity on one hand, yet contradicting itself by largely conforming to that stereotype.
Ask yourself how many times Still’s music has been played by the orchestra in the last five years in comparison to, say, Mahler’s. Ask yourself why this music is only presented in special programs that enhance how it is perceived as a thing apart from the classical “mainstream.” Ask yourself why the flagship symphony orchestra of a majority Latino city rarely performs anything from the vast and ever-growing repertoire of works by Latin American composers (except in those same, aforementioned ghettoized series).
Yet the somewhat ramshackle assembly of last weekend’s concerts highlighted that the perceived lack of diversity in classical music is not a problem germane to the genre itself. Rather, its organizers and performers often willfully ignore the diversity that sits right under their noses, preferring to crank out the “hits” over presenting unfamiliar (but often equally rewarding) works.
Without a commitment to performing more music by African-Americans, by Latinos, by Asians – and there are plenty of outstanding scores waiting to be performed – not to mention integrating them within the canon, gestures like last weekend’s concerts will ring hollow.
