Esa-Pekka Salonen: The years in review

Here are excerpts of Times reviews, culled from key performances during Esa-Pekka Salonen's years leading the Phil:

July 8, 1985

An oddball program performed with illuminating dash introduced the young Finnish conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, to Hollywood Bowl audiences at a preseason concert on Friday night.

The extravagantly gifted, 27-year-old podium personality, who made his United States debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic last fall, returned to that orchestra with another performance specializing in reconsidered standard works. As he had rethought pieces by Mendelssohn and Ravel for our delectation in November, in July he brought new ideas to items by Leonard Bernstein, Gershwin and Sibelius.

And triumphed. Though the Philharmonic did not achieve its most polished playing on this occasion, it did follow Salonen's lead with enthusiasm.

-- Daniel Cariaga

Dec. 2, 1989

He came. He conducted. He disappointed.

Perhaps it was inevitable. Esa-Pekka Salonen, the music-director designate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is enormously talented. Nevertheless, he is merely mortal. . . .

But something went wrong. Lightning refused to strike. The orchestra still sounded like the solid, slightly untidy ensemble we know and sometimes love. The repertory and its execution suggested a triumph of miscalculation.

-- Martin Bernheimer

Oct. 10, 1992

Lights. Camera. Mahler.

It is official at last. Esa-Pekka Salonen has become the 10th music-director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Or the 11th, if one cares to count the lamented, aborted regime of Georg Solti. . . .

In an obviously sentimental gesture, Salonen programmed the formidable Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler. The same vehicle had inaugurated his international career rather sensationally when, at the tender age of 24, he blithely took over the baton from an ailing Michael Tilson Thomas with the Philharmonia of London in 1983.

His success on that fateful occasion led directly to his first American engagement -- in Los Angeles the next year. The rest, as Nietzsche or Schopenhauer should have said, is history.

Salonen conducts this symphony as if he had written it. He understands the episodic structure, and he savors the conflicting tensions. It may, or may not, be coincidental that he, like Mahler, happens to be a composer, and that he is now about the age that Mahler was when the Third was conceived.

Salonen knows exactly how to contain the inherent sprawl. He knows how to gauge the thunderous climaxes, how to integrate the introspective bliss with the zonking violence. He knows how to brush past the marching-band vulgarity, how to focus the folksy charms, how to focus the exquisite lyricism and how to rattle (no pun intended) the Romantic rooftops.

Most important, perhaps, he knows how to keep the various elements of the symphony in proportion. He favors reasonable propulsion, even when Mahler preaches moderate restraint ("Ohne Hast"). But when he reaches the resolution of the final, otherworldly adagio, he dares to move very slowly. And yet he never seems to drag the tempo, never seems to exaggerate the emotional appeal.

-- Martin Bernheimer