Bruckner’s Fourth Gets Lost in Bowl Setting

It was an extraordinary evening Tuesday. The air was soft, warm, humid. A slight breeze felt like the frolic of gods. The sky, just before the concert, provided a magnificent vista of broken clouds, rimmed in red and silver; the background, a gorgeous neon blue.

All this and, at the Hollywood Bowl, Bruckner!

There is not much tradition of Bruckner at the Hollywood Bowl, and for good reason. The symphonies are expansive, unwieldy affairs, beloved of Brucknerites but bewildering to nonbelievers. They require far more preparation than the usual restricted rehearsal time allotted for Bowl concerts. They are sonic marvels with huge dynamic ranges for a very large orchestra that can sound paradoxically restricted outdoors, under amplification.

Finally, they are studies in solemn magnificence that ask an audience for a degree of reverent attention, if not downright surrender, hard enough for some in a concert hall, maybe unreasonable to expect in a more informal atmosphere. Bruckner wrote for the concert hall as church.

But the Bowl had at least some bases covered for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s performance of the Fourth Symphony Tuesday. At 70 minutes, it is hardly Bruckner’s longest. Subtitled (by the composer) “Romantic,” it is his most popular and accessible.

And Esa-Pekka Salonen, who has returned to conduct the Philharmonic this week and next in preparation for a European tour, has made a specialty of it here. His latest recording, just released by Sony in conjunction with the tour, is a sleek and luminous performance of the Fourth with the Philharmonic.

The splendid CD seemed, as it played in the car en route to the Bowl, exactly right for the L.A. light. The reds in the clouds and burnished smoothness of the Philharmonic’s cellos in the long melodies of the second movement were a perfect match. The brilliant crispness of the brass triplets in the Scherzo announced the transformation to silver. Best of all were the shimmering strings at the opening of the Finale, a musical soundtrack for a glowing blue background.

The mood was set, but the sad fact is that while Bruckner may work in the car--this is, for all his grandeur, in many ways a composer well-suited for private communing (and, perhaps, commuting)--the Bowl is an awkward atmosphere for such a symphony. The sound system isn’t up to it. The symphony opens in hushed tremolos that create a sensation of mystery and awe. They were inaudible, and without them, the first brass motives could suggest, incorrectly, bombast. The dynamic levels are moderated by amplification, and that robs Bruckner of both sublimity and drama.

The atmosphere, too, is a problem. The Bowl does not lend itself to serious, contemplative listening. There is a kind of stasis in Bruckner. With enough wine he can put you to sleep. Without it, he can make the restless antsy. The Bowl’s stacked parking is inhumane with such programming.

The orchestra knows this symphony well, and played it cleanly and with assurance. The brass were impressive at first. But as the work progressed, the orchestra too seemed to lose concentration and cohesion. It was probably very hot on stage.

Salonen began the program with five songs by Richard Strauss sung by Gundula Janowitz. Last season the German soprano’s still intensity and directness had brought tears to the eyes when she appeared in a song recital during the Philharmonic’s Brahms Experience. And here she was again, now on the Bowl stage, almost motionless, the consummate musician focusing on the emotional essence of each song. Nothing in her singing is extraneous.

The Bowl, unfortunately, is not the place for her. Her presence could hardly project to the farthest expanses of the amphitheater. Her voice remains sure (she turned 61 this month), and she uses it with artful restraint. But amplification is unfair at her age, a pitiless sonic mirror. Those who hear her on the tour surely will be luckier. Martin Chalifour played the violin solo in “Morgan” exquisitely.