The Los Angeles Philharmonic under the extraordinary baton of Gustavo Dudamel once again delighted us with a lovely rendition of Ludwig van Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ symphony (number 6).
It was easy to imagine the sights and sounds of the countryside highlighted by those lovely timpani passages evoking a thunderstorm.
The second half was a performance of Thomas Adès’s Inferno musically interpreting the journey through hell as envisaged by Dante Alighieri in the first part of his La Divina Commedia.
Whilst musically attractive, I felt this piece lacked the ability to follow the path through the forbidding landscape.
The problem, to my uneducated ear, was the lack of distinct transitions, so as to be able to distinguish between, for example, gluttons and hypocrites. This lack, I believe, led to the premature applause when there was a distinct silence at the end of the 12th part before contemplating Satan (or appropriate contemporary figure, perhaps?) in the lake of ice.
The performance overall deserves four stars but this piece only three at best.
