<\/p>\n
It\u2019s late autumn \u2014 viola time.<\/p>\n
The viola should perhaps be the instrument of summer. Its tone suggests sumptuous ripeness from the top of its range to bottom. But falling between the violin\u2019s soaring brilliance and the cello\u2019s corporeality, the viola also signifies transition. Toru Takemitsu called his tender, mistily opaque viola concerto \u201cRing Around Autumn.\u201d By recognizing the solo instrument as a conveyor of stock-taking, it colors darkly, evoking changing leaves and sunset.<\/p>\n
Last week, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Colburn School and MOCA independently hopped on the fall-harvesting viola bandwagon. On top of that, one of the season\u2019s most alluring new recordings is of Morton Feldman\u2019s \u201cThe Viola in My Life,\u201d by one of today\u2019s leading violists, Antoine Tamestit.<\/p>\n
The real surprise of the week was that, in their chamber music series, the L.A. Phil, LACO and Colburn all programmed one or more of Brahms\u2019 seldom-heard string quintets and\/or string sextets. Brahms wasn\u2019t the first to juice up the string quartet with a second violin. Mozart\u2019s late string quintets (sometimes called viola quintets) demonstrated the heavenly richness that an extra viola brings to the string quartet. But Brahms took the next step in his quintets (with doubled violas) and sextets (also double cellos) adding his rhapsodically \u201cBrahmsian\u201d plush, soul-warming thickened textures.<\/p>\n
The L.A. Phil began viola week with a Tuesday evening program, \u201cBrahms Strings,\u201d as part of the orchestra\u2019s chamber music series at Walt Disney Concert Hall that included the blazing early First Sextet and late, luminously serene Second Quintet. As part of its <\/i>chamber music series across the street in the Colburn School\u2019s Zipper Hall, Saturday, LACO coincidentally held \u201cA Brahmsian Affair,\u201d in this case featuring both the sextets. Adding to the coincidence, the Colburn School had programmed Sunday in its smaller Thayer Hall, Brahms\u2019 First String Quintet as part of one of its chamber music programs.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t quite turn out that Brahmsians would have the rare chance of a full survey of the quintets and sextets downtown over six days. Colburn wound up substituting Brahms Piano Trio No. 2 \u2014 no violas. But the school made up for it Saturday during a day-long MOCA seminar relating South Korean artist Haegue Yang\u2019s 2024 installation work, \u201cStar-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun,\u201d<\/a> which will be on view in March, to the music of Isang Yun. The seminar included a performance of the Korean composer\u2019s 1988 \u201cContemplation,\u201d<\/a> for two violas, played with gripping meditative intensity by recent Colburn graduate, Lan Cao, and current conservatory student, Ran Tae.<\/p>\n What goes with Brahms is always a good question, and both the L.A. Phil and LACO set the stage with something modern. At Disney, that was Jessie Montgomery\u2019s folk-style short 2008 string quartet, \u201cStrum,\u201d demonstrating the extraordinary vibrancy of a plucked viola string. A violin pizzicato is sharp, cutting. A cello\u2019s has the aura of a bass drum. The viola sounds like a heartbeat heard through a stethoscope. When the autumnal Second Quintet began, the two eloquent Philharmonic violas were ready to stealthily underscore a work of profound lyric restraint. In the second half, an early 20th century oddball fantasia for four violas by British composer\/violist York Bowen was preceded a gripping performance of the First Sextet.<\/p>\n Members of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra perform Brahms\u2019 String Sextet No. 1 at Colburn School Zipper Hall on Nov. 22.<\/p>\n (Elizabeth Asher Photography \/ Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n LACO\u2019s sextet program also went in reverse order, the second sextet heard before the first. Brahms was 27 and 32 when he wrote them. The first captivates via a young man\u2019s earnest effusiveness; the second\u2019s effusiveness, tainted by lovelorn glum, deepens.<\/p>\n LACO also commissioned a young L.A. composer, Julia Moss, to write her own string sextet in tribute to pianist and composer Sarah Gibson, whose tragic death at 38 from cancer last year devastated the L.A. new music community. Moss (who is a year younger than the Brahms of the First Sextet) prepared for the Brahms with \u201c(Please Don\u2019t) Look Away.\u201d Amid unsettling small sounds, sliding tones, long-held pitches and well-plucked heartbeat strings, the violas, in their middle-way range and manner, kept the balance. <\/p>\n LACO boasts but two violas in its ensemble, and they mattered. This time against the big moments of melody that Brahms assigns violin and cello, LACO\u2019s principal violist, Yura Lee, dramatically revealed how bits of Brahms\u2019 messy soul also found its voice in the viola.<\/p>\n In fact, this may be one reason why Brahms\u2019 only solo music for viola was an alternate version he made of his two clarinet sonatas composed near the end of his life. In 1986, the L.A. Phil commissioned Luciano Berio to write a concerto for its noted principal clarinetist Michele Zukovsky, and Berio responded by orchestrating the piano part of Brahms\u2019 Clarinet Sonata No. 1, turning it into a fascinating clarinet concerto.<\/p>\n