Hong Kong-born Elim Chan, who is music director of the Antwerp Symphony in Belgium, may not yet be well known to the Los Angeles general public. That will change. She has just released her first recording with her orchestra, and it is terrific, ending with a ravishing performance of the second suite from Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé.
Along with the attention-getting invitation to conduct the Hollywood Bowl opening, Chan can expect exceptional visibility in London next week, when she oversees the first night of the BBC Proms – the world’s largest classical music festival and the one with the widest reach, featuring live-streams on BBC Radio 3 of the nightly concerts.
Then in October, her reading of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances so excited the orchestra that rumours began circulating that the then 36-year-old conductor was a favourite to become the next music director. Some music business insiders insisted it was already a done deal.
That, of course, remains to be seen. This week, Kim Noltemy began as the new LA Phil president and chief executive, and she is thus far keeping an unusually (for this orchestra) low profile. Nonetheless, July 9 was obviously a music-director audition of sorts, as will be upcoming performances by other potential candidates.
The Hollywood Bowl, however, can be an excellent indicator of greatness or a terrible one. Rehearsal time is typically limited to the morning of the concert. The sound engineers have a say in the instrumental balances we hear. The video can be aid or distraction.
When an unknown 24-year-old Gustavo Dudamel made his US debut at the Hollywood Bowl in 2005, we instantly knew. When an unknown 28-year-old Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla made hers nine years later, we instantly knew.
But when a little-known Kirill Petrenko made his bowl debut in 2007, the now greatly admired chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic was simply not suited to the venue.
Tuesday night could easily turn out to be another “we knew”. Chan was very much in her element. Opening the programme with Korean composer Unsuk Chin’s Subito con forza (Suddenly with power), she needed less than 10 seconds to prove it.
The score was commissioned for the BBC Proms in 2020 as a tribute to Beethoven, and it opens with the famed, compelling beginning of the Coriolan Overture. The long-held loud C in the strings followed by a sharply attacked staccato chord in the orchestra heralds one of Beethoven’s great calls to attention.
Chin, however, interrupted the action immediately with wildly trembling percussion, squeaky high harmonics in the violins and an ominous low C drone in the cellos. In a dizzying instant, we were transported to a weird, oddly enjoyable, place.
Leading the LA Phil, Chan pulled this and other trickery that followed like a magician with not only a baton but compellingly expressive fingers and facial gestures that conveyed a sense of wonder.
She took a back seat to Augustin Hadelich, the authoritative soloist, in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, but once again became a theatrical magic maker with Scheherazade.
Rimsky-Korsakov offers many instrumental solos. Orchestral musicians love nothing more than to shine. They did. But they also made it sound – and on the big video screens, look – personal, as though they were, to a player, voting for Chan.
Adding to what had already been a very good night for violin, Nathan Cole served as concertmaster in solos that represent Scheherazade’s entrancing beauty.
Cole, who will share his duties as LA Phil first associate concertmaster with his prestigious new post as concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, is the next step in the LA Phil-isation of the Boston Symphony, which is run by former LA Phil president and chief executive Chad Smith.
But what that now means is anyone’s guess as the LA Phil enters, with little transparency, into uncharted territory.
