Salonen Warms a Cold Night at the Bowl

By the time Esa-Pekka Salonen got around to conducting “Lemminkainen’s Return,” the last of the “Four Legends” that closed the mostly Sibelius Los Angeles Philharmonic program Tuesday at the Hollywood Bowl, the temperature had dropped so drastically that some of us would have helped the Furies dismember the Finnish hero if it would have helped heat up the place.

When Salonen then generously offered an encore of yet more Sibelius, “The Death of Melisande,” a few of us seemed to think that there could be too much of a good thing and fled the amphitheater, despite Salonen’s well-known and well-demonstrated expertise in this repertory.

Indeed, the “Four Legends” transpired with Salonen’s conducting virtues on display: transparency, balance, proportion, restraint and energy. There was also strong, if not over-the-top, dramatic characterization in these moody, abstract tone poems.

There was strong characterization, too, in the Sibelius Violin Concerto, which preceded them, but here orchestra and soloist Joshua Bell inhabited different worlds.

Maybe Salonen didn’t want to overwhelm the soloist, but he never revved up the orchestra except when it wasn’t accompanying. He didn’t mirror or second Bell’s ideas. Perhaps he doesn’t see the work that way. One or the other was expressive, not both at the same time.

Bell was intense and individual, warm in tone, confident in difficult passages. But he must have driven the sound engineer crazy with all his bobbing and weaving. The line took on a secondary wave as the violinist drew near and then stepped away from the microphones.

The only non-Sibelius piece on the program was the opener: Copland’s “El Salon Mexico,” a musical portrait of a popular dance hall. Salonen conducted suavely, with a loose swing but enough meticulous rhythmic clarity to evoke the spirits of Villa-Lobos or Stravinsky.

The atmosphere was clean, lovely and balmy. It just wasn’t very tangy.

As for the Bowl weather: Be prepared.