By AARON GAGERS
The Los Angeles Philharmonic Centennial Concert and Gala have been filmed and are part of the Great Performances series on PBS.
Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel led the 100-year anniversary with an historic Centennial Birthday Celebration last October 24, 2019, at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
The event was held on the day of the orchestra’s first performance 100 years earlier and featured all three living music directors in Dudamel, Conductor Emeritus Zubin Mehta, and Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen.
The recorded event, Great Performances: LA Phil 100, premieres nationwide Friday, May 8, at 9:30 PM on PBS.
The concert by C Major Entertainment is distributed by Naxos of America, Inc. on DVD and Blu-ray.
The program features works that make personal connections to the three music directors: Salonen and Lutosławski’s LA Phil-commissioned Symphony No. 4 (Salonen and the LA Phil recorded all four of the composer’s symphonies); Mehta and Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, as well as Ravel’s La Valse; and Dudamel leading the Suite from one of Stravinsky’s most well known ballet scores, The Firebird.
The LA Phil is joined in the program by 20 representatives of the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, who play along with the orchestra.
