By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily
News

This column was
originally printed today in the Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley
Tribune/Whittier Daily News

The phrase “The beginning of the end” takes on two quite
different meanings over the next month in Southern California’s classical music
scene.

Next Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. in Ambassador Auditorium,
Chilean-born conductor Maximiano Valds will lead the Pasadena Symphony in the
final concert of its 82nd season, conducting Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 and
Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major with Chinese pianist Chu-Fang Huang as
soloist.

Meanwhile on Thursday at 8 p.m. in Walt Disney Concert Hall,
Gustavo Dudamel begins the final five weeks of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s
92nd season with a survey entitled “Brahms Unbound,” which will feature all
four Brahms symphonies and Ein Deutsches
Requiem (A German Requiem) paired with other works, including a U.S.
premiere, a West Coast premiere and (this weekend) a rarely performed piece
that dates from 1985.

When the Pasadena Symphony was in long-range planning mode
for its 2010-2011 season, Music Director Jorge Mester had planned on leading
concerts in the orchestra’s long-time home, the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Then
came the move to the smaller and acoustically superior Ambassador Auditorium.
However, Ambassador wasn’t available for the final concert’s original date and
Mester wasn’t free on May 7 so Valds was engaged.

Subsequently, Mester and the orchestra parted ways and Valds
— currently music director of the Puerto Rico Symphony and head of that
country’s prestigious Casals Festival — ended up becoming the last of five
guest conductors during the current season.

Huang, the soloist for the Liszt second concerto, epitomizes
one of the best aspects of Mester’s 25-year tenure as music director. Jorge had
an uncanny ability to uncover young, relatively unknown artists and present
them early in their career (e.g., Midori, Robert McDuffie, among others). The
25-year-old Huang would appear to fit in that category.

When Dudamel and the Philharmonic planned “Brahms Unbound”
as the conclusion to their 2010-2011 season, each of the Brahms works was to be
paired with a new work, including two world premieres. Two postponements and
the death of Polish composer Henryk Gorecki last fall put the kibosh on that
intriguing goal but the programs will, nonetheless, offer some interesting
counterpoints to the question of what interpretative ideas Dudamel will bring
to the ultra-familiar four symphonies and, in particular (to these ears, at any
rate) A German Requiem.

This weekend’s concerts (Thursday, Friday and Saturday
evenings and Sunday afternoon) will pair Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 with Henri
Dutileux’s 1985 work, L’arbre des songes,
a violin concerto whose title translates The
Tree of Dreams. Leonidas Kavakos will be the soloist.

Next weekend (also Thursday-Sunday) brings the West Coast
premiere of another violin concerto: Steven Mackey’s Beautiful Passing, along with A
German Requiem. The soloist in the Mackey work — which was inspired by the
death of his mother and was premiered in 2008 in Manchester England — will be
violinist Leila Josefowicz, for whom the concerto was written.

Next Sunday evening brings one of the most eagerly awaited
organ recitals in recent memory as Cameron Carpenter makes his first appearance
playing the Walt Disney Concert Hall organ at 7:30 p.m. Carpenter is one of the
most talented and flamboyant organist playing today; if you’ve never heard him,
and especially if organ recitals aren’t your standard concert fare, this is one
program you don’t want to miss.

Carpenter, who turns age 30 this year, rarely provides his
program ahead of time, but the Phil says the music will be drawn from the
following: Jazz etudes by Nikolai Kapustin; piano encores by Vladimir Horowitz,
Arcadi Volodos, and Cyprien Katsaris; compositions by Brahms, Bach, Carpenter,
Chopin, Dupr, Grainger, Hanson, Honegger, Liszt, and Ravel; as well as film
scores by Finzi, Gershwin, Hisaishi and Williams.

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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved.
Portions may be quoted with attribution.