Music and Jazz : An Hour of Triumph for Witold Lutoslawski

It doesn’t happen all that often. But when it does, it’s wonderful.

It happened Friday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, in one of its periodic moods for adventure, devoted an entire concert to music of the late 20th Century--specially, to the brilliant, subtle, taut, uncompromising, progressive, essentially atonal, ultimately poignant music of Witold Lutoslawski.

Such acts of bravery are undeniably conscientious. More important, they are essential to the survival of symphonic music as a viable art form in our time.

Unfortunately, such acts usually antagonize most of the regular subscribers, and intimidate--or at best baffle--the rest. The Philharmonic public is conservative, virtually by definition and literally to a fault.

Our audience still likes to think of the concert hall as a comfy museum that houses comfy old masterpieces. Our audience doesn’t like to take chances, doesn’t like surprises, doesn’t appreciate programs that threaten to stretch ears, much less minds.

Or so we thought.

The house was nearly full on Friday. And it was full of sensitive sophisticates who listened intently, applauded discerningly and mustered a worthy standing ovation at the end.

The occasion was both historic and festive, a slightly belated 80th-birthday party for a grand seigneur of modern music. Lutoslawski, born in Warsaw on Jan. 25, 1913, was returning to Los Angeles for his fourth visit since 1983 to conduct a spare sampling of his own spare compositions.

It began with a splash of sensuality: the intricate “Mi-parti” of 1976. It ended with a golden oldie: the highly dramatic concerto for cello and orchestra (or is it cello versus orchestra?) written for Mstislav Rostropovich in 1970.

The most significant offering came in the middle, however, with the world premiere of his Symphony No. 4. It was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in conjunction with an avid local patron of the contemporary muse, Betty Freeman.

Lutoslawski conducts his own works with superb clarity, with striking efficiency and characteristic restraint. He refuses to conduct the works of other composers. That may be their loss.

It is impossible for a casual observer to tell if our orchestra plays so well for him because of his compelling baton technique, or because of the psychological persuasion his presence on the podium automatically inspires. The reason doesn’t matter. The results do.

In the new symphony, the results defined stubbornly cerebral materials manipulated to achieve unabashedly emotional goals. In 25 compact minutes (five more than officially projected), the composer constantly flirts with the antiquated voice of romanticism. The dominant impulse is an ardent yet somber cantando passage for unison strings, set in theatrical focus by increasingly translucent textures and increasingly simplified harmonic structures.

The two uninterrupted movements fluctuate between outbursts of almost naive lyricism, usually aborted before they can approach a predictable climax, and outbursts of urgent agitation, usually abandoned before they can threaten to impose even a hint of bombast. Lutoslawski’s sense of order always precludes the obvious sentimental gesture. One is grateful for the integrity of his understatement, and doubly moved because of it.

It is possible to find the roots of the Fourth Symphony in “Mi-parti”--which, not incidentally, is defined by Quillet as “comprising two parts which are equal but different.” A minute essay in textural progression, it somehow fuses fierce analytical precision with exquisite aesthetic indulgence.

The popular Cello Concerto can be regarded as a symbolic duet between a free-spirited soloist and a potentially oppressive symphonic counterforce. In the gripping finale, the independent voice suffers apparent defeat, only to return as a conquering hero, of sorts, in a Eulenspiegelesque coda.

The macabre wit recalls the vocabulary of Stravinsky more than Strauss. The expressive language remains prime Lutoslawski.

Lynn Harrell, the astonishing soloist, vacillated with ease between nonchalant innocence and heroic bravura.

Lutoslawski, it should be noted, is a composer of many virtues, and concision is one of them. His longest piece, the Preludes and Fugue for 13 strings (1972) lasts only 34 minutes. The entire program on Friday involved no more than an hour of music.

It was enough.