MUSIC REVIEW : Salonen Meets Sibelius, Grandly

Say this for Esa-Pekka Salonen, the charismatic music-director elect of the Los Angeles Philharmonic: He thinks big, and he thinks original.

Friday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with a little help from his native government, he offered the first major installment in Los Angeles’ ambitious celebration of the 75th anniversary of Finnish independence.

The sprawling focus of attention--often fascinating, frequently bombastic, sometimes lofty and occasionally banal--was Sibelius’ symphonic poem, “Kullervo.” The Philharmonic had never ventured its rhetorical convolutions before. (Aulis Sallinen’s new music-drama based on the same epic source will follow, courtesy of Finnish benefactors and the Music Center Opera, later in the month.)

Sibelius completed his 70-minute odyssey--a broad, multi-textured evocation of honor, passion, betrayal and tragedy--in 1892, when he was 26. Enlisting a huge orchestral apparatus and a gutsy male chorus plus solo mezzo-soprano and baritone, the work pays implicit homage to Slavic primitivism on one hand and to Germanic inflation on the other.

Traces of Tchaikovsky-inspired sentiment materialize here, snatches of Mussorgsky-esque exotica turn up there. Integrated tributes to Wagner and Bruckner seem pervasive. Upon careful scrutiny, a listener can even isolate some previews of coming Sibelius attractions, both motivic and harmonic.

Not surprisingly, Sibelius came to regard this romantic indulgence as something of a youthful indiscretion. During most of his lifetime, he stubbornly forbade performances of anything but the relatively progressive middle movement. “Kullervo” returned to the active repertory only in 1958, a year after his death.

In the cool, objective light of 1992, the music remains patently uneven. Much of it sounds dutiful, repetitive, pompous and padded. Just when one begins to abandon attention, however, just when rhythmic monotony threatens to become chronic, interest is revived by a flash of melodic invention, by a particularly felicitous splash of instrumental color, or by a stroke of dramatic bravado.

It seems unlikely that “Kullervo” will ever enter the standard repertory, even when Salonen and the Philharmonic add their imminent recording to the catalogue. No matter. The symphonic poem is well worth a hearing, 100 years after its premiere, especially in a performance as compelling and authoritative as this one.

Salonen, who showed no compunction last week about dawdling over Mahler’s Fourth Symphony until the rhetoric was stretched out of shape, sustained brisk momentum here. Although he gave the whomping cadences their due and ignored no inner detail, he managed to understate the expressive extremes.

In the process, he reinforced tension. And “Kullervo” needs as much tension as it can get.

Placed on its new risers (four tiers, not the three previously miscounted), the Philharmonic played with welcome suavity and dash if without the rich sonic presence one had anticipated. In the middle movement, the celebrated Finnish baritone Jorma Hynninen sang the agonizing verses of Kullervo with crisp fervor; Marianne Rorholm, a Danish mezzo-soprano making her local debut, showed promise even though she did not find the parlando of the unwittingly incestuous Sister particularly grateful.

The gentlemen of the Helsinki University Chorus, extravagantly imported for the occasion, chanted with lusty precision for Salonen in “Kullervo.” Under their regular director, Matti Hyokki, they brought mellow tone, ardor and a few pitch problems to a half dozen a-cappella songs of Sibelius during the first portion of the curiously balanced program.

“Finlandia” served as the almost inevitable encore.