Music & Dance Reviews : Salonen Leads Philharmonic

For the third of his four programs this season with his orchestra-to-be, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen offered an agenda concentrated on the Key of D.

At the first performance of this Haydn/Stravinsky/Brahms program Friday night in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center, the music director-designate and his colleagues of the Philharmonic made this combination a winning one.

Not that Brahms’ Second Symphony ever was in danger of failing, given this orchestra’s long specialization in it and the young conductor’s bright display of its overt and optimistic elements on this occasion--it has a darker side, of course, one that did not surface at this performance.

Nor would one expect the Violin Concerto by Stravinsky to let us down, certainly not with the expert soloist being Cho-Liang Lin, dependable as always in his probity, intelligence and technique.

Jimmy Lin, as all the world seems to call him now, apparently has become a beloved icon, like Itzhak Perlman before him, and Midori after, and for the same, right reason: He communicates through music to that wider audience that always seems to recognize and reward the rare combination of virtuosity and humanity.

The unknown quantity in this evening then became Haydn’s Symphony No. 80, in D minor, a neglected--the Philharmonic in its 73-year history has never played it--masterwork of uncharacteristic Haydnesque brooding and eventual Haydnesque triumph.

With the recent placement of the orchestra on steep risers, Salonen may be aiming for a new transparency of sound. Though the present configuration--in the Haydn work, with the two halves of the violin section facing each other, across the podium--may improve the aural situation for the players, on Friday it did not bring out strongly the inner workings of the Symphony, which sound-wise emerged thick rather than articulated, heavy rather than lightened.

Despite Lin’s impassioned advocacy and clarity of thought and the orchestra’s careful playing, the Stravinsky concerto also failed to balance its many components into a totality offering transparent textures. All the parts seemed to be present, but without achieving a vibrancy.

Brahms’ autumnal Second closed the evening in a manner more joyous than the content of the work may merit. Brilliant rather than probing, Salonen’s reading chose optimism rather than reflection for its prevailing Brahmsian mood. The result may have surprised some, but certainly not the many, who responded at the end with a noisy, and standing, ovation. One wonders: Would one of the orchestra’s Thursday night subscription audiences have done the same?