LOS ANGELES—Los Angeles is not a city short on spectacle, but rarely does it arrive in the form of an Italian organist and a Californian soprano inside a cavernous Gothic Revival church. On Sunday, the Beverly Hills International Music Festival presented La Voce dell’Organo at the First Congregational Church of LA, home to the second-largest organ in the world — a leviathan of pipes that loomed over the evening like an unspoken promise.
The opening works, by contemporary Italian composer Daniele Maffeis, did little to reveal that promise. His Capriccio e Cannone, a suite of four movements, was melodically attractive but structurally uncertain, as though the ideas hadn’t quite decided whether to stride forward into modernism or retreat politely into tradition. Spiritelli dell’Organo, which followed, was more firmly grounded in classical harmony, though one suspects its charm might be greater in a smaller hall than under the full weight of this vast instrument. Donato Giupponi, the organist, handled both works with elegance and authority — but his brilliance was, at first, somewhat hemmed in by the material.
Enter Veronica Bell, soprano from Los Angeles, whose arrival quite literally changed the air in the room. Her three opening Donizetti songs filled the vault of the cathedral with a resonant warmth, her phrasing supple, her musicality luminous. In a single moment, the concert gained the sense of occasion that had, until then, been conspicuously absent.
A modern interlude from Carlotta Ferrari did not disturb the new momentum. Instead, it served as a charming palate-cleanser before Bell returned with Verdi’s formidable aria Tu Che le Vanita from Don Carlos. Here was the transformation: Giupponi, at last, let the full organ roar, and Bell matched him with a voice both dramatic and unexpectedly full in both high and low registers. The cathedral, which had been politely observing the proceedings, now seemed fully awake.
From this point, the programme blossomed into something rather magnificent. Giupponi’s own arrangement of Rossini’s overture to L’Italiana in Algeri was dazzling in its virtuosity, while Bell’s return for two Rossini songs and Puccini’s Nessun Dorma left no doubt that these two lesser-known artists were more than equal to the grandeur of their setting.
It is tempting, in a city so enamored with celebrity, to measure a concert’s worth by the fame of its performers. But on this occasion, the names mattered far less than the artistry. What began with hesitant curiosity ended with the sense of having witnessed something rare and deeply satisfying. One only wishes the audience had been larger, for Giupponi and Bell deserved far more ears to carry their sound out into the hot Los Angeles night.
Kit Alastair, The Independent
