Goldsmith Emerges a Philharmonic Winner

Jerry Goldsmith did not win an Academy Award for his fine score to “L.A. Confidential” on Monday, but he did achieve something else this week that’s far harder for a film composer. He had a concert piece played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Thursday night under Esa-Pekka Salonen as part of its regular subscription concerts at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

“Music for Orchestra” is not, as had been expected, something brand-new. Written in 1972 (while Goldsmith was scoring “Patton”), it’s an abstract 12-tone work reflecting the academic fashion of the time. Its style is essentially conservative, reminiscent of emotionally roiling Viennese modernism earlier in the century. Goldsmith says in the program notes that he had wanted to make a lot of noise. For eight minutes, he does. Compellingly and with skill.

It would have been interesting if the Philharmonic had not named the composer but just given the generic title. Knowing who Goldsmith is, and knowing his movie music for science fiction epics, for dramas such as “Chinatown” and for thrillers, one senses in this piece all kinds of noir-like effects. The orchestration is thick but clear, the sound is heavy but not especially dense. Rhythms seem to clench down, to hold you in their grip. One starts to see images of old L.A., whether they are there or not, and to sense an ominous tone.

Goldsmith knows his way around an orchestra, and the players and Salonen seemed to enjoy getting around this music. The performance was bold, with jolting impact. The audience, larger than usual for a Thursday night, clearly sensed that this was music about the darker side of the city it lives in, and loved it.

Though it was not a night of film music, Salonen followed Goldsmith with two composers who have chanced occasionally to write inspired music for the movies--Shostakovich and Copland. Shostakovich was represented by his Second Piano Concerto, an atypically buoyant late work from a composer who often seemed to carry the full weight of Soviet oppression on his musical shoulders. A present for his son, Maxim, graduating from the Moscow Conservatory in 1957, the concerto is all engaging spunk and wry humor (rather than the composer’s more typical bitter sarcasm). The pianist was Yefim Bronfman, and he made a great, dazzling, bring-down-the-house show of it.

The Copland was “El Salon Mexico,” with which Salonen had opened a program earlier in the season and here used to close one, and his approach to it is unique and stunning. No longer simply an appealing character study, it becomes under Salonen a brief epic, a show piece for the orchestra, almost like a Mexican “Rite of Spring.” It would be good to see Salonen now turn to more substantial, modernist, complex and less-often-performed Copland, the big orchestral scores such as “Connotations” or Symphonic Ode.

In a program that traversed Hollywood, Mexico and Moscow, Italy may have been one destination too many. No one’s heart--not the Philharmonic’s, not Salonen’s--seemed particularly in Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony (“Italian”). A reduced orchestra was used, approximating 19th century practice, but the strings weren’t as tidy as we’ve come to expect (although the wind and brass playing was a delight). Salonen’s conducting was properly fleet and agile,- but without lilt. A more serious problem was the acoustics. A chamber orchestra doesn’t make the impact of a larger band in this hall. In an environment of big orchestral effects from Goldsmith and Copland, of Bronfman’s brawny playing, unengaged Mendelssohn sounded, however unfairly, like mere travelogue.

* The Los Angeles Philharmonic repeats this program tonight at 8, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., $8-$63, (213) 850-2000.