Review: L.A. Phil premiere finds its power in percussion, percussion and more percussion

Timpanist Joseph Pereira performs the premiere of his concerto "Threshold" with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Thursday at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

By Richard S. Ginell

Jan. 26, 2018 1:20 PM PT

If the percussion section is the kitchen of the orchestra — or so the music appreciation folks used to tell us when we were kids — then the display of utensils at Walt Disney Concert Hall Thursday night would rival that at your local Ikea.

It took about four crowded lines of small type in the printed program to list all of the common and exotic percussion instruments that Los Angeles Philharmonic principal timpanist Joseph Pereira had in mind for his new percussion concerto, “Threshold,” which received its world premiere Thursday. With all of that hardware out there, plus an imaginative mind deploying it, the piece couldn’t fail to stimulate the senses — and it didn’t let us down.

For Pereira, the word “threshold” expands in meaning to include the world at large, of being bombarded daily with issues and events whose “concentration of intensity” is driving many of us crazy. How does this translate into sound? Gustavo Dudamel, the L.A. Phil, the British percussion duo Maraca2 (Tim Palmer and Jason Huxtable) and Pereira himself on six timpani performed in envelope-stretching ways that turned everyone into a giant percussion ensemble, inhaling and exhaling as one.

With Gustavo Dudamel conducting, timpanist Joseph Pereira and the Los Angeles Philharmonic perform "Threshold."

To enforce this unifying effect, the orchestra was surrounded by percussion: Maraca2 and Pereira were up front, and three percussionists operated in the rear. The piece started out with soft rolls by Maraca2 on medium gongs placed on the heads of timpani, with pedals altering the pitch. In the rear, the head of a bass drum was scraped by a scrub brush, producing a sound like that of a wind machine.

The percussionists employed novel effects like rubbing stones on ceramic tiles or — perhaps representing the clatter of the world — by battering away on sets of tom-toms and roto-toms.

Riots of color came and went in disconnected episodes whose overall structure didn’t become clear until the end, which seemed like a return to the point where the piece began. If there was tension, it was a relaxed sort of tension, confident in its collective power. With one sonic surprise after another, “Threshold” had no trouble holding my attention over its 25-minute span.

Pereira’s piece was prefaced by the splash of color that made the music world notice Stravinsky for the first time, the tiny showpiece “Fireworks,” with Dudamel going along with the composer’s own recorded tempos.

As a closer on the eve of his 37th birthday, Dudamel revisited Brahms‘ Symphony No. 1 — and for a while, it was like a seance.

Dudamel on Thursday, the eve of his 37th birthday.

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With his massive tempos and textures in the first movement, Dudamel conjured memories of Carlo Maria Giulini, who performed Brahms 1 here many times, always in the same broad, granitic way. The main difference was that the L.A. Phil plays so much better now than then, and Dudamel’s firm rhythm kept things on track.

Yet in the finale, once the majestic main theme was struck for the second time, things really started to move with ever-increasing vigor. By the time Dudamel reached the coda, all flags were waving with organ-like brass exulting in the chorale. It was Dudamel’s Brahms now.

For what it’s worth, the L.A. Phil’s headline for this concert, “Dudamel Conducts Brahms,” would give the casual browser no idea of the real news value of this concert (same thing last week with “Mälkki, Strauss & Dance”). Interesting how marketing works.

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