Energy of Salonen, L.A. Philharmonic Wins Over N.Y. : Music: The orchestra receives cheering audiences and favorable reviews on its first visit since Esa-Pekka Salonen became music director.

“I’m here to see what all the fuss is about,” a member of the New York Philharmonic staff said Monday night as she entered Avery Fisher Hall to hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic perform under Esa-Pekka Salonen. She was not alone.

Indeed, New York made a genuine fuss over the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s first tour here since Salonen became music director two seasons ago. Its programs Sunday afternoon and Monday at Lincoln Center had large, exuberantly cheering audiences. The power-mongers of New York’s musical community were there, a couple from competing institutions looking fairly unhappy. Salonen was feted by the Finnish consulate, and his record company, Sony, introduced him to the local press at a lavish sushi lunch in a glamorous setting high atop its landmark building.

And, at all of these events, the same remark was heard over and over: “Do you believe the New York Times piece?”

Last Sunday Salonen and the Philharmonic won cultural New York’s most desirable piece of journalistic real estate--the front-page lead feature in the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times. But, more than that, the headline read “Becoming the Next Bernstein? (Or Boulez?),” and above it was a large color picture of Leonard Bernstein conducting, late in his life, with a smaller insert of Salonen rehearsing in his Izod polo shirt.

As any streetwise New York music lover will insist, it is simply not possible to combine the charisma that Bernstein exerted over audiences here with the audience-discouraging contemporary music advocacy Pierre Boulez displayed when he succeeded Bernstein as music director of the New York Philharmonic. Alex Ross’ rosy feature article, however, implied that just such an unbelievable miracle is taking place in Los Angeles.

Such comparisons always have their dangerous side here, where one writer’s acclaim will prompt others to counteract perceived puffery. But, while none of the first reviews to appear has gone so far as to concede that Bernstein has been reborn as a Boulez, the critical response has been glowing, nonetheless, with energy and energized being the operative words. Reviewing both programs (which, except for one Beethoven overture, remained in the 20th Century) for the Times, Allan Kozinn wrote that the orchestra “responded with a level of energy and excitement that one hears too rarely at orchestral performances.”

Kozinn found that Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra concluding Sunday’s program (which also included Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra and Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, with Olli Mustonen as soloist) “the most breathtaking of the orchestra’s performances” but thought that its playing of Lutoslawski’s Fourth Symphony, a New York premiere, came close. “Both works were given taut, suitably virtuosic readings, but more interestingly, the performances had a transparency that illuminated subsidiary musical lines and clarified structural details,” he wrote.

Similar praise came from Anthony Tommasini in New York Newsday who contended that “energized by Salonen’s arresting conception of the (Lutoslawski), the orchestra played with purposefulness and communicative power.”

Shirley Fleming in the New York Post summed up the Lutoslawski as a work whose “prevailing spirit is one of almost unremitting intensity,” and she found that “Salonen and his orchestra consumed it, massive outbursts and all.”

More controversial was Salonen’s performance of Sibelius’ Second Symphony, which closed Monday’s program, although certainly not with the audience, which gave what surely must be the most ecstatic ovation to an orchestral concert here all season.

Tommasini found the Sibelius “clearheaded and illuminating,” for him the passion and sweep was always at the service of structure. Kozinn, on the other hand, thought that, on this occasion, “in his quest for expansive tempos and a big, thrilling sound, Mr. Salonen sacrificed some of the drama that should enliven the work’s first and last movements.”

In the minority, dissenting camp, was Sedgwick Clark, the influential editor of the annual directory Musical America and one of the more outspoken and passionate longtime observers of the New York music scene. He left the concert calling Salonen’s interpretation of Sibelius “stodgy and shapeless, the way I find all of the symphonic conducting I’ve heard him do. He has no vision of the final page.” But even Clark said he was “very, very impressed with the Lutoslawski,” and in it, as well as in an encore from Sibelius’ “Lemminkainen” Suite, he thought the orchestra played “smashingly, with everything under control.”

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has played beautifully in New York before, under both Carlo Maria Giulini and Andre Previn, as Kozinn reminded readers in his review. But clearly the orchestra has achieved a swift and remarkable image change with this tour.

Some of that may be due to lucky timing--the New York season has been somewhat lackluster thus far. And there are still the reviews in the weekly publications to weigh in. Moreover, it remains to be seen how well the Los Angeles Philharmonic will be remembered at season’s end, since such great orchestras as Cleveland, the Concert-gebouw, the London Symphony and the Vienna Philharmonic are on their way with significant offerings. But, for the moment, Los Angeles and Salonen are the musical talk of a town that probably respects energy more than any other quality, and their return next year to Lincoln Center is already eagerly anticipated.