Music Review : Salonen, L.A. Philharmonic Sparkle in ‘The Firebird’

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s interpretation of Stravinsky’s “The Firebird” is something of a minor miracle. You leave it a bit awe-struck and charged up. You want to tell friends.

Under his leadership Wednesday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Los Angeles Philharmonic gave a performance of the score that sparkled and roared.

Others (conductors with cuffs) have found more elegance in this music. Some have luxuriated more in its sultriness, have gushed more over its opulence. “The Firebird,” after all, isn’t so far removed from “Scheherazade.”

But Salonen brings his own integrity to the score, his own way. His “Firebird” doesn’t look back, it doesn’t indulge. He dissects it. The music emerges steely and clean, sculpted and steady but never pushed. Its athleticism threatens. The color scheme becomes intricate. Perhaps no one has better shown the brilliance of “The Firebird’s” landmark orchestration--an encyclopedia of instrumentation referred to by legions of composers since. In Salonen’s care, it’s a jewel in sun, an etching of violence.

This conductor and orchestra have ventured the work before, most significantly on their visit to Salzburg in 1992. Wednesday’s performance approached tour polish. The pianissimos shimmered and the fortes ripped. Salonen looked “into it”; he has seldom given more.

The first half of the concert was given over to a piece that the Philharmonic, reportedly, hasn’t played since 1940, the Violin Concerto No. 1 by Karol Szymanowski. The soloist was acting concertmaster Alexander Treger, playing as if he had something to prove on the day when an outsider was named to take over his post, and proving it.

But, egad, what a piece. The 1916 opus--with a “Firebird”-influenced orchestration and the harmonic palette of Debussy mixed with a large helping of Scriabinesque chromaticism and mystical ecstasy--is a syrupy piece of exotica, part Valentino-movie accompaniment, part B-level violinistic showpiece. Perhaps it’s an acquired taste.

At any rate, Treger played the dickens out of it, singing sweetly up high with a wonderfully pure tone, forceful and emphatic elsewhere, always clean and purposeful. Salonen and the orchestra got the most out of its colors and climaxes, but it seemed like a wasted effort.

* Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with violinist Alexander Treger, in the same program Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., (213) 365-3000.