Leave it to Kansas City Symphony Music Director Matthias Pintscher to arrive at a creative approach for a concert of 20th-century works. Not only did the Helzberg Hall audience experience extraordinary solos and full-throated symphonic sound, but a multimedia event that featured visual delicacies to savor. Unfortunately, technical glitches cast a brief shadow on an otherwise successful program.
The problem occurred when a film that was to be viewed during a performance of Edgard Varèse’s Déserts failed to load not once but twice. Music Director Matthew Pintscher, a fine communicator from the stage, could have been rattled as he had to stop the orchestra twice. Instead, he calmly kept the audience engaged, explaining how Varèse’s work caused a scandal at its premiere. After departing the stage a second time, he identified the reason for the technical glitch: a “crashed” computer that was restarted. Fortunately, the third time was a charm, and the performance ensued.
From its dramatic, bell-like opening, Déserts commanded the audience’s attention. While devoid of conventional, lyrical melody, the work exhibited a series of intriguing and occasionally arresting soundscapes. It is scored for an array of wind, brass and percussion instruments, and the ensemble played with crisp articulations and sure balance.
When Varèse was composing Déserts in the 1950s, he envisioned a film component that was never realized during the composer’s lifetime. In 1994, video artist Bill Viola created a film to be viewed during performances of the work, and this was the work that was projected during the performance. Audience members experienced images of a sea floor, lightning, fires and an empty parking lot—visual deserts that yielded a successful merge of sound and image. Recorded sound passages, called for by the composer, were played alongside images of a man alone eating in his home.
Recorded music and live performance were managed seamlessly and effectively. The work seemed a little long, and the opening starts and stops extended the length even more.
The concert opened with a solo performance of Luciano Berio’s Sequenza V by the orchestra’s principal trombonist Evelyn Carlson. Berio’s Sequenza is a series of 14 compositions penned over a period of forty years for solo instruments, and in one case, the voice. They exploit all aspects of technique and virtuosity, and in the case of Sequenza V, humor. Berio was inspired by a clown he saw as a child, dedicated the work to him and incorporated witty content.
Carlson played the part brilliantly, in a highly comical fashion while garbed in a red clown nose and a red and white gown with polka dots. The music calls for a wide variety of unusual sounds, such as inhaling while playing. Carlson even pulled a plunger out of her instrument at the beginning of the work. At one point she turned to the audience and simply said “why?” Near the end she lay down on the stage and acted as if she had fallen asleep. At another point she sat in a seat in the string section and used a bow on her instrument.
None of this detracted from the excellent technique she employed while playing and acting. The appreciative audience responded very warmly.
Russian composer Alexander Scriabin composed Prometheus: The Poem of Fire (Symphony No. 5) in 1910. While written in an expansive harmonic language that was considered experimental at the time, the style felt almost conservative after the Berio and Varèse works.
Lighting and Production Designer Luke Kritzeck had the stage awash with red light. Above the stage were light bars that corresponded to Scriabin’s “color organ,” where he had different colors representing different chords and keys. The stage was packed—Pintscher noted that there were over a hundred instrumentalists. The result was a lush and luminous orchestral texture.
Pianist George Li served as a soloist in the work, adeptly performing multiple virtuosic runs and adding abundant instrumental color. Li is no stranger to the orchestra, having performed as featured soloist on several occasions. Concertmaster Jun Iwasaki was also featured in several shorter passages, playing with a crystal-clear tone.
The work was impressive throughout, but the driving crescendo to the concluding chord was especially exciting—the color organ displayed its brightest white light, followed by “lights out,” for a visually and aurally stunning effect.
Conductor Pintscher promised in his opening remarks that this was a “daring” program, and he and the orchestra certainly delivered on that promise.
This concert was reviewed on Wednesday, September 9, 2026.
The Kansas City Symphony presents a variety of upcoming concerts throughout September and October. For more information or to obtain tickets, visit www.kcsymphony.org.
