The L.A. Phil and conductor Susanna Mälkki honor Oliver Knussen with his Violin Concerto, played by Leila Josefowicz, and a Green Umbrella concert
. A year and a half later, he is already taking on the stature of a legend. The takeaway from the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s tribute to Knussen both in its weekend concert and Tuesday night Green Umbrella program in Walt Disney Concert Hall is that his legacy will inevitably continue to grow larger and larger.
Given how frustratingly late the fanatically perfectionist composer could be in finishing, or never finishing his commissions, and given his own lovably quirky and lumbering manner, it could sometimes be hard to fully appreciate just how much Knussen mattered. But as I’ve been surveying his career as composer, conductor, educator and general man about music, I am convinced that he was the greatest British musician of his time.
Five Knussen works were on the two L.A. Phil programs. They contained but 40 minutes of music, but they said a lot. The orchestral concert featured the Violin Concerto and the flashy, brilliant, three-minute fanfare “Flourish With Fireworks,” which Knussen wrote to open Michael Tilson Thomas’ first concert as music director of the London Symphony in 1988. There’s yet another connection.
The three movements are only about 16 minutes but easily contain enough material for a 40-minute concerto. The forms are Baroque but made fantastical. With Mälkki in keen support, Josefowicz brought ferociously raw expression to the opening “Recitative” and a poignant lyricism to a too-moving-for-words central “Aria.” Then she turned the “Gigue” into a gripping dance of life and death.
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