Music : Salonen Offers Plodding Mozart, Vital Bruckner

Esa-Pekka Salonen said a temporary farewell to his Los Angeles Philharmonic audience at the Music Center this weekend with a program that used the lyrical intimacies of Mozart as a prelude to the dramatic complexities of Bruckner.

On Friday night, Bruckner fared better than Mozart. Far better. The young maestro once again suggested that he thinks best when he thinks big.

If Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony stimulates Salonen’s imagination--or even commands much of his attention--he kept his interest a secret on this occasion. He went through the proper motions diligently and intelligently. He kept the beat clear, and the textures lucid. But he seemed bored.

Tempos plodded until Salonen finally perked up for the presto finale. Nuances were generalized and accents blurred. Articulation remained dull. Repeats sounded merely repetitious.

Charm? Forget it. Pathos? Not a whiff.

One was nagged by the suspicion that Salonen regarded Mozart’s lyrical miracle merely as a throat-clearing exercise. Bruckner’s Third Symphony, which came after the early intermission, obviously represented the important business at hand.

One can recall more propulsive performances of this sprawling, ultra-Germanic masterpiece. One certainly can think of performances that were more successful in concealing the inequities of Bruckner’s inspiration, not to mention the clumsiness of his transitions. One can imagine performances more sensitive to the delineation of subtle detail and the ongoing need for forward propulsion.

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Still, one had to admire the rigid authority of Salonen’s approach and the breadth of the dynamic scale he enforced. One had to applaud his cool analytical acuity even when embroiled in the awesome contrapuntal thicket. Salonen found no terror in Bruckner’s vast architectural detours, no embarrassment in his swollen rhetorical conundrums.

Most important, perhaps, Salonen treated the massive convolutions with the same respect that he lavished on the mundane meanderings. Bruckner blithely juxtaposed the ridiculous and the sublime, as if both were sublime. He got carried away with a folksy Landler one moment, embarked on a multilayered examination of the tragic superhuman spirit the next.

Salonen projected the inherent whimsy with elegant grace, and he defined the cataclysmic climaxes with elemental force. He never strained, however, never stooped to exaggeration or distortion.

He deserved his ovation. So, not incidentally, did the mighty Philharmonic, which played with the brilliance in depth reserved for special occasions.

Incidental intelligence:

This concert was the first given by the orchestra since the sudden “amicable” departure of its stalwart, longtime concertmaster, Sidney Weiss. The Philharmonic management usually marks such milestones with speeches, program tributes, public presentations and other sentimental gestures. But all was quiet on the Pavilion front this time. One had to wonder why.

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One also had to wonder why Weiss chose to end his Philharmonic career so abruptly. He could have waited, after all, for the end of the season, which lay just three weeks away. (Salonen’s last stand of ‘93-94 is to be followed by two weeks with Roger Norrington.)

One also had to wonder if Weiss is still scheduled to play the Barber Violin Concerto with the Philharmonic at Hollywood Bowl on July 7.

Official spokespersons mustered no useful answers. Strange things are happening.

And, speaking of strange things, Ernest Fleischmann, impresario in residence, used a lengthy program insert this weekend to hawk the forthcoming summer of alfresco raptures. Most striking, perhaps, was his reference to one soloist, Gidon Kremer, as “probably the most interesting among the world’s truly great violinists.”

One had to wonder how that critical judgment will make the other truly great fiddlers feel when they come to town. One also had to wonder about the untruly great ones.