MUSIC REVIEW : Salonen Sets the Scene

Esa-Pekka Salonen, 33, doesn’t become music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic until October. The official date of ascension, however, seems little more than a formality. The baby-faced whiz kid from Finland is already staking claims and setting scenes.

That, of course, is good.

In his concert on Thursday--the first of his three programs as guest conductor this season--he made it clear that he knows what he wants, and that what he wants isn’t always easy to get.

He apparently wants a bigger, brighter, better blended, more immediate sound than his orchestra-to-be normally musters at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. To that end, he introduced an elaborate new set of risers that position the players unusually high on the stage, unusually close to each other and unusually close to the audience.

The trilevel wooden platform--tested at UCLA’s Royce Hall and reportedly constructed at the cost of $65,000--represents a preview of the hydraulic stage apparatus envisioned for Disney Hall. The design will, no doubt, undergo some modification before our orchestra moves into its incipient dream house across the street. In the meantime, some aural adjustments will be required on both sides of the proscenium.

The new acoustical ambiance presumably permits members of the orchestra to hear each other with unprecedented clarity. It also facilitates a sometimes welcome, sometimes disorienting stress on secondary voices.

More problematic, it magnifies dynamic outbursts to the point where a forte sounds like a fortissimo and a fortissimo sounds like a sonic boom.

The evening began provocatively with Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary--written in 1695 by Henry Purcell, “transcribed and elaborated” in 1991 by Steven Stucky. They key word here is elaborated .

Stucky, the current composer-in-residence at the Philharmonic, has added violent percussion punctuation to the solemn Baroque lines. He also has blurred some of the essential harmonic formulas--gently yet deliriously. The result, a modernist’s vision of antiquity, beguiles even when it flirts with stylistic perversity.

Next, Salonen turned with obvious enthusiasm to the piquant sensuality and shimmering decadence of Benjamin Britten’s “Les Illuminations.” Although the orchestra trampled some of the subtle nuances, Barbara Hendricks’ lofty soprano brought radiant tone and fine expressive point to the Rimbaud texts.

The greatest challenge came after intermission, with the sprawling rhetoric, the intimate charm and the heaven-storming fervor of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. Salonen seized the opportunity to prove, once again, that he is a musician unfettered by tradition, a thinking-person’s conductor, if you will.

In an age that seems to value efficiency over inspiration and technique over interpretation, he almost seems to be an anachronism: a man with original ideas about the work at hand. Not all of his ideas, unfortunately, make perfect sense.

Salonen’s Mahler starts out very slow and gets slower. The scale is vast. The opportunity for exploration of detail endless. So far, so grand.

It doesn’t take long, however, for mannerism to become a serious problem. A somber impulse emerges tragic. A simple flight of lyricism stretches into a heroic dirge.

A muscular outburst invokes raucous bombast. A dalliance with rubato invites rhythmic distortion. Tension flags with every lingering ritard, and Salonen likes a lot of ritards.

One has to admire his loving caress of the arching line, his leisurely exposition of melodic fragments, his bold application of color and careful delineation of texture.

The trees are often wonderful, no doubt about that. Too bad Salonen loses sight of Mahler’s forest.

On this early occasion, the Philharmonic responded to the boss’s formidable demands with more eagerness than polish. Hendricks returned to sing the “Wunderhorn” verses of the finale with exquisite purity and muted pathos.

The non-capacity audience (never underestimate the impact of a little rain) harbored a lusty choir of hackers, coughers and premature applauders. They all but destroyed the essential serenity of the performance and challenged the conductor’s composure in the process.

Welcome to Los Angeles, Mr. Salonen.