MUSIC REVIEW : Boulez Leads Second Week at Philharmonic

Thirty-two years after its premiere, Olivier Messiaen’s “Chronochromie” still shocks the listener.

As played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, led by Pierre Boulez in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center on Thursday night, “Chronochromie” hit like a thunderbolt: sudden, deafening, mind-disorienting. It becomes a loud blast from a symphonic arsenal, detonated by the flick of a wrist.

In tribute to his former teacher who died April 27, Boulez added what some consider the masterpiece of Messiaen’s mid-century writings to his second Philharmonic program of the month, replacing the originally scheduled “Arcana” by Varese.

Never before played by our Philharmonic, “Chronochromie” offers something for everyone. It has intellectual thrills in its construction, an esoteric building plan having to do with durations of time and their continuous permutations. For the unthinking, it has explosions of sound-color separated by blocks of lesser density and by layered silence. It gives no rest to the attentive.

One can imagine that portions of the 24-minute composition describe natural events, including Messiaen’s beloved bird songs. Or one can accept the continuity of the work’s seven sections as abstract. At no point can the listener assume that a seeking after prettiness motivated the composer; like nature itself, “Chronochromie” follows its own, apparently random path, skitteringly or in granitic deliberation, toward its own end.

In changing his program, Boulez still maintained a climactic scheme in which the suite from Ravel’s “Ma Mere l’Oye” (Mother Goose) began the proceedings, and Stravinsky’s complete ballet music to “Petrushka” closed it. As played with unflagging attention by the Philharmonic, these two performances emerged marvels of concentration, technical solidity and clarification.

Without undue stresses or over-interpretation, the French conductor seemed to create an ambience in which “Ma Mere l’Oye” could exert its exquisite charms without any tampering from the podium.

He took an opposite tack with the specific narrative in “Petrushka,” a work that gains in expressivity from finicky detailing and close dynamic and coloristic calibrations. In both cases, the players gave Boulez what he required.

Before “Petrushka,” Boulez & Co. offered a delightful, perfectly transparent revival of Stravinsky’s mordant “Four Etudes” (1928).