LHL + LA Phil

I hope Grant Barnes won't mind my pulling this comment onto the front page of the blog:

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was scheduled to sing in the Mahler Third with the Los Angeles Philharmonic this weekend. Salonen asked that the following be placed in the program: “The Los Angeles Philharmonic dedicates these performances to the memory of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.”

In the pre-concert talk to about 400 people in the attached ARCO Hall Friday evening (which is scheduled to be uploaded Monday onto the LA Phil’s website), Salonen said that he hadn’t wanted to talk about her but, perhaps sensing the warmth of the audience, did so, describing her as “unique,” and saying that “sometimes these people appear who seem to have it all.” He first said how hopeless it was to describe musical phenomena with words and then went on to describe LHL’s “incredible quality of being everywhere in the room, no matter what size, at the same time” and the “intense presence of this beautiful thing.” He recalled an “amazing” experience when he started rehearsing with her “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.”

Salonen said that she had “a habit” of always rehearsing facing the orchestra in order to establish emotional contact with the players. When she got to the point in the Mahler of describing a “beautiful tree to fall asleep under forever,” the orchestra couldn’t continue playing, “the wind players were in tears,” and so she sang the piece to the end without the orchestra, presumably continuing to face them, full-on in the intense emotion of the moment.

Then, Deborah Borda quoted LHL to the effect that she was in the business of soaring, and left the memorial moments at that.

In Mahler's Third, the last words the alto sings are, "Ach komm und erbarme dich über mich."

I'm grateful the San Francisco Symphony chose to memorialize her by dedicating music, her soul, back to her.

An mp3 of the talk is up. The discussion of Lorraine begins around 27 minutes in, but it's preceded by a wonderfully articulate description of Mahler 3 that's worth hearing. (FYI, the LA Phil has started recording their Upbeat Live pre-performance talks and distributing them as podcasts.)

Comments

[Paula]

I'm so glad you included this post about LHL.

I'm not sure you mentioned (or had reason to) Alex Ross's superb and eloquent tribute to her in a recent issue of the New Yorker?

If you haven't, here is the URL http://www.newyorker.com/critics/music/articles/060925crmu_music

[M. C-]

thanks for the link! it was temporarily up in the tasty miscellany column, but i still need to add it to the permanent post, which will happen shortly.