Classicist versus sensualist

In their day, Brahms and Wagner divided audiences into angrily opposing camps. Sober conservatives went to the concert hall thankful to Brahms for upholding tradition in his beefy symphonies and concertos and chamber music. Meanwhile, besotted Wagnerians agitated for a music of the future, which could be found in opera houses able to meet the unprecedented musical and scenic demands of their German idol.

Thursday night, Esa-Pekka Salonen once again pitted classicist against sensualist at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The first half of his Los Angeles Philharmonic program was devoted to Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto, 50 minutes long and written in 1881. After intermission came 40 minutes’ worth of excerpts from Wagner’s “Gotterdammerung,” the last of his “Ring” operas, which was completed in 1874. The match was a fair fight. And a great concert.

In many ways, the Brahms/Wagner divide was less about the composers than about their followers. Sixty years ago, Schoenberg never tired of telling his students in Los Angeles that Brahms was a closet progressive whose thick, chromatic harmonies subverted tonality. And for all Wagner’s musical advances, no composer ever became more quickly canonized.

The L.A. Philharmonic, in fact, first played music from “Gotterdammerung” in 1921, two years after the orchestra was founded and six years before it got around to Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto. These days, Wagner’s “Ring” is such standard fare that stage directors try harder and harder to keep it fresh. Sunday, a new production of “Siegfried” opened in Vienna in which Brunnhilde was awakened by the titular hero not on her fire-protected rock but in a public restroom.

Although the interpretations of both composers were slightly outside the norm, the Disney Hall on Thursday felt free of dogma. Leif Ove Andsnes, the popular Norwegian pianist, was the soloist in the Brahms, and neither he nor Salonen cares much about the soft side of the composer.

That meant that for the “Aimez-vous Brahms?” crowd, the crisp-toned piano and no-nonsense orchestra might have felt a little like ice water used to extinguish whatever smoldering flames of romance they find in this, the more lyrical of Brahms’ two piano concertos. Still, I thought the performance might also have provided a perfect soundtrack for Francoise Sagan’s 1959 existentialist novel about a disillusioned middle-aged woman and her young lover.

Often the ground beneath one’s feet was not solid in this performance. Brahms has a habit in his concerto of creating the impression that the piano is swaying nicely while the orchestra is just adding something pleasantly murky underneath. In reality, there are fault lines in this score.

Andsnes has brilliant technical command. He was true to the notes on the page, incisive in his rhythms and outstanding in his ability to balance rich Brahmsian textures with revelatory clarity. On the surface, he played with songful grace, but he and Salonen also delved deep below, pointing up rhythmic intricacies and taking striking note of dissonances.

Wagner is less obscure. He creates spectacles of sound in his orchestra, and “Gotterdammerung” sounded spectacular. Salonen chose the standard orchestral excerpts -- “Dawn and Rhine Journey” and “Siegfried’s Funeral March” -- and ended with Brunnhilde’s “Immolation.” Soprano Lisa Gasteen was the soloist.

The orchestra was large. Four harps were placed at the lip of the stage in front of the first violins. The horn contingent looked massive, and there was one player in the balcony for an offstage effect.

As “The Tristan Project” proved a couple of years ago, Wagner in this hall is something special. Again Salonen emphasized clarity, the true sounds of instruments rather than mushy magic. His is a Wagner without the voodoo. And yet to hear penetrating brass, singing strings, the refracted color of the wood- winds and the quartet of harps calling a listener to heaven is to be in a kind of sonic heaven.

Again, an “Aimez-vous Wagner?” contingent could miss some warmth. Gasteen was a stern and angry Brunnhilde, not an ecstatic one. But the Australian soprano commands attention. She has a dark, rich tone that can rise above the orchestra when it needs to. She went to her funeral pyre a stoic, not a mystic, which I found moving.

Also moving, and often thrilling, were the Philharmonic horns, which had a big night, even if they started off slightly shaky in the Wagner. Both pieces were built from horn calls, and Eric Overholt and William Lane were the protagonists in Brahms and Wagner, respectively. Peter Stumpf provided the lyricism necessary for the cello solo in Brahms’ slow movement.

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Los Angeles Philharmonic

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 2 p.m. Sunday

Price: $40 to $142

Contact: (323) 850-2000 or www.laphil.com