MUSIC REVIEW : Salonen Returns With a Vital Rands Premiere

He’s back, and not a moment or a hemidemisemiquaver too soon.

We haven’t seen much of Esa-Pekka Salonen since November. In fact, we haven’t seen anything.

While the volatile music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic was recharging his aesthetic batteries elsewhere, a long parade of guest conductors manned his podium here. No one, alas, womanned it.

Despite a few flashes of brilliance, it wasn’t much of a parade. Comfortable mediocrity is becoming an uncomfortable standard during the boss’s absences. Perhaps it is a matter of poor planning. Perhaps the lapses can be blamed on economic necessities. Perhaps the current pickings among baton virtuosos are even slimmer than we feared.

In any case, it was good to find Salonen in his accustomed place Thursday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. And it was especially good to find him concentrating on the sort of music he does best.

What sort is that? New music. Thorny music. Convoluted music. Cool music. Music that benefits from understatement. Music that snaps, crackles and pops.

The agenda began auspiciously with the world premiere of Bernard Rands’ complex yet soothing Symphony, just completed. For a centerpiece, Salonen turned to the wry and dry flourishes of Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 1, which served as an especially grateful vehicle for Yefim Bronfman. Finally the Finnish maestro looked homeward with Sibelius’ Second Symphony, and tried valiantly to make the lush romantic indulgence seem lean.

It was a stimulating night at the Music Center.

Rands, a transplanted Briton who won the Pulitzer Prize for his “Canti del Sole” in 1984, does not dabble in trendy systems that reduce music to Pablum for the masses. Nor does he pay much homage to dry academic formulas that honor science above sensuality. Nearing 60, he writes music that wants to appeal in almost equal measure to the brain and to the gut. That puts him in rare contemporary company.

His Symphony--don’t burden it with a portentous number, he implores--is just an accessible mood piece on one level. It evolves in fascinating textures that constantly shift their density and focus. Rand is a master of piquant orchestration, and it is tempting for the listener to sit back, relax and simply bask in the contrasting sounds--some weird, some opulently seductive.

But one can discover plenty of method behind Rands’ lovely madness. The ideas unfold with compelling, organic logic. Rands savors subtle dynamic nuances as well as bold dramatic contrasts. He plays knowingly with harmonic tension and odd rhythmic counterpoint.

He occasionally interpolates sophisticated quotations, some from himself. His melodic inclinations may seem a bit inhibited--he tends here to deal more with short fragments than with long sentences--but he never slights lyrical expression in his quest for linear sophistication.

This symphony--three closely interrelated movements spanning half an hour--deserves repeated hearings. Soon.

Salonen conducted it with masterly, sympathetic brio. The Philharmonic played it with heroic clarity. The large first-night audience applauded it--and the seemingly happy composer--politely.

Salonen, Bronfman and Bartok represent a particularly felicitous combination, and their collaboration on this occasion gave the concert its most invigorating snaps, crackles and pops. In the still-provocative concerto of 1926, Salonen provided a cool and crisp, perky yet pesky orchestral frame for Bronfman’s hearty bravura. The performance was broad in scope, propulsive in force, climactic in effect--just what the composer ordered. We look forward to the recording.

Salonen is certainly not a conductor prone to wallowing in the emotional excesses of the Sibelius Second. Although he coaxed uncommonly vibrant tone from his strings, he refused to dawdle over the thematic repetitions, and, for the most part, avoided accentuating the obvious. He cut out as much fat as possible, reducing the flab without compromising the flavor. For better or worse--mostly better--this was Sibelius Lite.

Until he reached final cadences, and he reached them rather briskly, the conductor paid the composer the compliment of letting him cross his own t ‘s and dot his own i ‘s. The sentiment sang, but restraint ruled.

Then, when it came time for the ultimate brassy orgasm, Salonen gave it its zonking due. The audience went wild on cue.

Incidental intelligence: For two of this week’s programs (Friday and Sunday afternoon), Salonen chose to substitute Stravinsky’s “Petrushka” for the Sibelius. Ask not why.