LOS ANGELES — It should have been a night off for the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. But the orchestra and guest conductor Elim Chan were called in Aug. 12 to salvage what appeared to be another embarrassing cultural moment perpetrated by the current administration in far-off Washington, D.C.
The Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela was supposed to have begun a week-long stand at the Bowl that night, led by the most illustrious alumnus of El Sistema, Gustavo Dudamel. But it may have been too much to hope for in retrospect, for in July the SBSO was quietly forced to cancel its trip due to unnamed “travel complications.”
The Los Angeles Times claimed that the cancellations were due to travel restrictions placed on Venezuelan residents in June by the Trump administration. But the LA Phil, which operates the Bowl, didn’t issue a public announcement of — nor a specific reason for — the cancellations, just an email informing advance ticket buyers of the change in plans, plus a sudden switch of program details on its website. When the SBSO canceled, so did Dudamel, and his featured soloist, pianist Yuja Wang, did likewise.
That was the bad news. Yet some good came of it, for LA Phil watchers got another look at one of the rumored leading candidates to succeed Dudamel as music and artistic director after he leaves for the New York Philharmonic in 2026. The Hong Kong-born, American-educated Chan has turned in some impressive concerts in previous dates with the Phil, and some members of the orchestra are high on her abilities.
Eschewing a baton, Chan led a vigorous, assertive, tightly knit orchestral accompaniment to Canadian violin virtuoso James Ehnes’ formidable, absolutely unjaded rendition of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Exuding total confidence and authority, Ehnes generated metrical rhythmic momentum and excitement, coaxing a deeply warm tone quality from his 1715 Stradivarius, and Chan matched his sharply etched, unsentimental conception. Ehnes polished off his portion of the evening with Eugene Ysäye’s Sonata No. 3 for solo violin, a 1923 piece with mildly modernist double stops yet still a 19th-century mindset at its core.
Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from the opera Peter Grimes (no passacaglia this time) might seem like a cool-weather, fish-out-of-water selection for an outdoor concert in the good old sizzling Southern California summertime. But the afternoon heat had completely dissipated as the sun went down, and the rippling of the North Sea waves in the violas, clarinets, and harp, and the mellow answers of the low brass worked their magic ways as the Bowl shell lit up in aquamarine colors.
Chan did a fine job setting the table in the “Dawn” interlude while taking a nervous tempo for the “Sunday Morning” interlude that exploded with a brilliant climax. “Moonlight” heaved but not too heavily, and the “Storm” was cranked up to a huge fury as the Bowl lighting turned crimson. Britten hasn’t been played much in Southern California since James Conlon’s exhaustive Britten 100/LA festival for the composer’s centenary in 2013-14 left town, and it was good to see some of his best music programmed again.
Russian standards returned to the spotlight after the English interlude as Chan struck up Stravinsky’s 1919 Firebird Suite (why not try the composer’s 1910 or 1945 suites once in awhile?) — a calling card for Dudamel. Other than a very fast tempo for the penultimate passage of the finale, Chan didn’t do anything startlingly different with the score, but neither did she merely skim through it, securing excellent playing from the Phil, with brilliantly sprung detail in the “Dance of the Firebird.”
Chan didn’t stick around after that. Gemma New and the LA Phil filled the Aug. 14 date that the SBSO was forced to vacate, and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra under Enrico Lopez-Yañes takes over the SBSO’s Aug. 15-16 gigs backing the Aguilar family.
Finally, I must note that the Bowl’s sound system was cranked up high, which inadvertently, if conveniently, often served as a barrier against the frequent roar of helicopters ignoring the Bowl’s warning lights. Ultimately, neither rogue aircraft nor politics could stop the show.
