Review: LACO Sets the Standard with Impressive Season Debut

September 15, 2025, 7:24 PM · Beethoven's Fifth Symphony - eye roll. How many times have I heard this piece? Played it? Written about it?

Enough times to wonder if I really need to hear it again.

Yet on Saturday night the music crept into my bones had me on the edge of my seat. Anticipation, wonder, triumph, exuberance - why was I feeling it so strongly? Why was I smiling anew at the brilliance of it all?

A simple answer: the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

Yes, I went to LACO's season-opening concert on Saturday night at the Colburn School's Zipper Hall, and I found musical excellence aplenty. The program featured cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, who played Schumann's Cello Concerto in A minor, as well as Haydn's Symphony No. 82 and - as mentioned - Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.

Cellist Nicolas Altstaedt with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Jaime Martín. Photo by Elizabeth Asher/LACO.

There is plenty of spark from inside this orchestra, from their longtime principals like concertmaster Margaret Batjer and cellist Andrew Shulman to the newer additions such as the dynamic Yura Lee as principal violist. And within the sections are reliably familiar faces - veteran musicians playing together with unified purpose. No one here is asleep at the music stand.

Director Jaime Martín, who has served as Music Director since 2019, is both showman and musician's musician, conducting with joy, precision and the ease of someone intimately familiar with his work - someone who clearly loves it.

LACO also is where you are likely to discover a gem of a soloist who somehow is known to the rest of the world but who has seldom or never played in the giant metropolis of Los Angeles. Such was the case with the French-German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, who was making his Los Angeles debut with this performance. What's more, this season LACO will bring to town a number of other such soloists, including German violinist Anthony Marwood - as well as the pianist/composer Fazil Say and others. (See their full season here.)

Saturday's concert opened with Haydn's Symphony No. 83 in G minor "The Hen," not a piece played every day, but it was quite dramatic right from the beginning, with fabulous energy interrupted by tidy silences. This was intentional and wakeful playing, with the first violins precisely together in their very exposed passages, including one with a multitude of grace notes that did indeed sound pretty "clucky." (According to LACO's program notes a listener gave the symphony its "Hen" name several hundred years ago based on that passage!)

Notably - this crowd did not clap between movements. Certainly, none of us wants to be the snob that makes a newbie feel bad about clapping at the "wrong time," but wow, I certainly enjoyed feeling the reverberation from the end of one movement, the silence between, then the start of the next movement.

The second movement brought one of many instances of conductor Martín's humor: as the second violins played an extra-long instance of repeated notes, and he made a sort of "what are these guys doing?" kind of gesture, as if they'd gone rogue and were going to repeat them forever - before he gave the cue for the next passage. You really don't want to look away when Martín is on the podium!

The third movement was a toe-tapping "Menuet" (I literally tapped my toes - even after all those years of music teachers shushing the toe-tapping out of me), and in the vivacious fourth movement Martín looked a bit like a bird himself, both arms and hands flapping - whatever he was doing, it worked - the orchestra's entrances were spot-on.

Next Nicolas Altstaedt took the stage for Schumann's Cello Concerto in A minor - a large man with an intense presence - he made the cello look relatively small! He had a wonderfully fast, wide vibrato - and also a good sense of how and when to vary it. He tossed off fast arpeggios and high notes down at the end of the fingerboard with ease and precision and created a variety of voices, at times gentle and still, then very vigorous.

He never lost the thread, whether smooth and melodic, edgy and adamant or dancing all over the cello. A second-movement melody, shared with LACO Principal Cello Andrew Shulman, was particularly beautiful. The third movement was relentless, full of fast passagework and speeding to the end, after which he received a standing ovation and several "curtain calls."

Altstaedt rolled up the endpin on his cello and held the instrument between his legs to play an encore: the "Sarabande" from Bach's Suite No. 1 in G Major. He played it softly, with very little vibrato. It was quite entrancing, as he coaxed the audience into a breath-holding silence, with the last note so especially quiet.

After the intermission was Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. As he delivered some remarks before the performance, Martín did a good-humored double take at the gaping row of empty chairs right in the middle of the hall - "What is this?" Sadly a contingent of the audience had simply left at intermission.

Too bad for them!

Martín acknowledged the overwhelming popularity of this symphony noting that "I'm sure we could do a sing-along Beethoven five!"

LACO Music Director Jaime Martin addresses the audience as Concertmaster Margaret Batjer looks on. Photo by Elizabeth Asher/LACO.

Cellist Nicolas Altstaedt with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Jaime Martín.

He noted the Beethoven gave it a metronome marking of 108 - "really fast" - a bit faster than some of the "Fate-knocking-at-the-door"-type recordings of old.

Based on that metronome marking and on the history of Beethoven's time, Martín said that he feels that "for Beethoven, this is a piece about revolution - about people rising up." It also contains music of great sensitivity - he had them play a few examples from the second movement - the pizzicato accompaniment at m. 99 and 107 - so simple, so beautiful.

"This is what I love about Beethoven - the contrast between aggression and beauty," Martín said.

And with that, they started the piece. It's easy to forget that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony begins with silence - a rest! It can be quite tricky to conduct the empty first beat in a way that rallies the troops to audaciously rip into the offbeat for those famous first four notes. Martín gave it no-holds-barred huge arm thrust, and it worked every time.

During the first movement it was a joy to watch the energy in the viola section, led by Yura Lee, and at times the entire orchestra felt like a wave. By the end of the movement Martín actually was actually jumping the air as he gave that first-beat thrust, and the last emphatic note of the movement resonated in the silence.

The second movement had some gorgeous playing - the section cello soli that starts the movement, the circular woodwind playing in the middle.

For me the third movement is the most interesting of all. It comes blasting in with the horns (well done, Michael Thornton and Teag Reaves) but then evolves into something much more furtive. Perhaps this is where we hear "revolution," the quiet stirrings, the lack of direction which eventually gets organized, grows and spills into the triumphant and joyous last movement.

Martín took the last movement at a fast tempo that went right up against physics - nonetheless, all of this motion created great excitement in the music, and what a delight to feel the musical equivalent of "We win!" As thick as the texture gets, everything remained incredibly clear and articulate to the end. The standing ovation was well-deserved, for bringing so much life to this music.

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Review: LACO Sets the Standard with Impressive Season Debut

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