Salonen Shows Modernism Is Still Alive and Well

“Hear Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct the Philharmonic New Music Group prior to their Lincoln Center performance!” So ran the advertisement for Monday night’s final concert of the Green Umbrella season at the Japan America Theatre. Except for the exclamation point, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, once so outrageous in its ads, might almost have seemed to have lost its promotional daring.

In fact, with this concert, the orchestra is bringing to New York repertory no other American orchestra would even think of performing at home, let alone on tour. Instead of chasing after the most accessible romantic new music, instead of desperately turning to music that will connect with popular culture, Salonen remains true to his European roots in High and high-minded Modernism.

One can fuss that, in the process, Salonen also ignores the West Coast’s wonderful tradition of nontraditional music by the likes of Henry Cowell, Lou Harrison, Harry Partch and Terry Riley, all of whom even New York seems newly enamored of. But as Steven Stucky, the Philharmonic’s new music advisor, told the audience in the preconcert discussion, the orchestra still finds much life in Modernism.

And so, it turned out, did Monday night’s large and ideal audience, a healthy mix of generations that was impressively enthusiastic.

The concept behind the carefully considered program was to frame new works by emerging Modernists with a couple of pieces by old masters. The first old master was Gyorgy Ligeti, whose “Melodien,” written in 1971, is a spectacular occasion for bright melodies bursting out all over the place like the finale of a particularly lavish fireworks display that won’t stop.

The other old master was Iannis Xenakis, that intimidating mathematician-architect-composer and hero of the Greek resistance who once accused musicians of being nitwits for not having discovered the Second Law of Thermodynamics before the physicists had, because he believed that any competent musician should have realized that notes (especially those in his own music) function like the atomic particles of gasses.

But Xenakis has also always had an ear for the dark and deep wonder of sound and, now that he computes less, his music has moved from science to something resembling the evocation of ancient mysteries and unimagined mystical rites.

“Echange” is one of the more recent and dramatic Xenakis pieces. A solo bass clarinet gets into an indescribably weird and disturbing dialogue with a small chamber ensemble.

David Howard was the intrepid soloist, and although the performance was overall more fleet and less brutal than the one recently recorded by the ST-X Ensemble on the Mode label, it certainly left an audience jolted and cheering.

Of the emerging composers on this occasion, Sweden’s Anders Hillborg got the most attention. His 25-minute “Meltdown Variations” starts off ordinary enough, with typical modernist harmonic explorations, but after seven or eight minutes it gets wacky and stays that way.

Scales appear from nowhere, then a kind of mad pointillism takes over, and twice there are blats that the composer likens to the sound of a sick elephant.

The other two young composers, both of whom teach in the Bay Area, were represented by tiny token works. But Mexican composer Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez’s “Jarocho locochon” and Argentine Jorge Liderman’s “Notebook” both make interesting attempts to remain connected to their native traditions despite their academic affiliations.

Little needs to be said about the performances. They were committed and thorough to that very rare point where they allowed the music speak for itself. Modernism, Monday night, was very lucky and very alive.