Salonen’s Coming of Age

In the portrait of most young artists, there is a first work. Not the first completed, not even the first that is really good, but the first that says, in some very fundamental way, “Here I am.” With Mahler, that first work was the orchestral song cycle “Songs of a Wayfarer.” With Stravinsky, it was the ballet “Firebird.” With Esa-Pekka Salonen, it is “LA Variations.”

Salonen, who takes the Los Angeles Philharmonic on tour to Europe next week, waved goodbye to local audiences Thursday night at the Hollywood Bowl with his “Variations.” And he did so in company with those Mahler and Stravinsky firsts in spectacular performances that, themselves, also said something fundamental about the Salonen-L.A. chemistry.

“LA Variations,” which was commissioned by the Philharmonic and had its premiere early in 1997, is hardly the music of a young or inexperienced composer. The earliest piece I know by Salonen is a student cello sonata, written 20 years before “LA Variations.” It has just been recorded by cellist Antony Cooke on Resort Classics, and it is a surprisingly strong, rich, compelling work. But the original voice of the artist is not yet apparent. One hears still in it other voices, most effectively Messiaen’s at the end.

The struggle for Salonen to find his voice proved a long one, but one that says as much about our times and culture as it does about the composer. Salonen, now 40, came of age as a Modernist in sensibility and training just as musical Modernism went into crisis. His fascination was with the complex, intellectually organized 12-tone music that was the powerful force in the ‘50s and ‘60s. But he is also a born performer, a showman. For 20 years he balanced those two tendencies in his music through a sophisticated application of virtuosity. His music was strict, but it had flair in its wild demands on the performer, and it also could have a welcome sense of fun.

“LA Variations” is the breakthrough. The compositional sophistication is certainly still there. The program notes (Salonen needs to work on those) remain the thoughts of the old 12-tone cobbler making structures of “chromatic phenotypes” and “hexachords.” But the music speaks of other things. An interesting tune, the tune of someone who has listened not just to the world music around him, but, by coloring it with synthesizer, the way pop music also listens to world music. Influences are still apparent in the awesome machine-like music of Ligeti, the luminous exotic counterpoint of late Carter, a few arctic blasts of Sibelius, but the effect is original and immediate.

The first time around the work delighted for its great exuberance, its open L.A. feel and its vivid orchestra writing. Heard Thursday, played faster, more confidently, the piece seemed more than delightful. It is music of immediate appeal and relevance that doesn’t need to overthrow Modernism (as did Minimalism and the renewed Romanticism of much popular orchestral music these days) to get there. This is an important step in musical culture at the end of the century, and it should be recorded.

Mahler’s “Songs of a Wayfarer” is in the air right now. Thomas Hampson sang it emotionally, ferociously, with the Pacific Symphony recently; Frederica von Stade gave a handsome performance of it in June with the San Francisco Symphony. Lorraine Hunt was the singer Thursday, and she was simply volcanic. Hunt is best-known in Baroque opera, but she is not to be pinned down. She also sings modern music, and now she is singing 19th century music just as astonishingly well.

I’m sure we missed some nuance at the Bowl by hearing Hunt rather too boldly amplified and seeing her too far away (she is a commanding stage presence). But what we got was a plateful anyway. The music pours out of her with the vividness and force that is supposed to belong only to singers of a fanciful golden age. But like Salonen, Hunt seems to build on the best of the old but be right up to date. In these pages, Peter Sellars, her champion from Day 1, recently compared her, in the theatrical excitement she creates, to Callas. He is no stranger to hyperbole, but not this time. This was the singing of another great artist who has arrived.

Ten years ago Salonen recorded “The Firebird” with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London. That performance is original, thrilling, flashy and immature. Thursday, with our Philharmonic, the performance was slightly less original (and closer to Stravinsky), more thrilling, flashy and mature. There were no false moves, only a huge amount of detail and scrumptious playing to admire.

This, presumably also with Thursday’s two encores (Silvestre Revueltas’ “Noche de Jaramas” and Prokofiev’s “Death of Tybalt”), will be the money program of the upcoming tour. It is also the kind of civic promotion for L.A. that no amount of money could possibly buy.