Debating the Philharmonic and Faith

“Trust us,” the Los Angeles Philharmonic trumpets on a brochure for next season that arrived in the mail this week. You may not be thrilled to see Schnittke’s name on a program with Tchaikovsky, or Messiaen’s with Beethoven, but the orchestra assures us that Esa-Pekka Salonen knows what he is doing. Fear not this modern music. The advertising advises a good dinner first (a list of downtown restaurants will happily be provided). With a full stomach and open mind, you might have a wonderful surprise.

Orchestras aren’t exactly known for generating trust when it comes to programming new or recent music. Audiences buy tickets for music they like or think that they will like, not for what their music director tells them is important. Pierre Boulez, for instance, can pack them in for his Debussy, but audiences are still known to turn on him when he conducts his own or other modern music. That’s nothing new. A century ago Mahler was the most important conductor in Europe, but he was thought slightly mad as a composer.

As they do everywhere, Beethoven and Brahms sell best in Los Angeles. But after six seasons with the Philharmonic, Salonen does appear to have generated an unusual amount of good faith from his listeners. At a time when orchestras study the latest techniques of pandering to their patrons, the Philharmonic evidently feels that Los Angeles is different.

And maybe it is, given the response to Around Ligeti, the festival celebrating the 75th birthday of modernist Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti that dominated the last five weeks of the Philharmonic’s 1997-98 season, which ended Sunday.

Rules were broken. One concert, for instance, began with whisper-quiet music, which is usually the recipe for disaster in orchestra programs. Audiences take a while to settle down. And “Atmospheres,” Ligeti’s 1961 experiment in wondrous effervescence, is often barely audible. A chorus of coughs, a sizzle of candy wrappers, a tattoo of purses and glasses cases snapping shut will completely spoil it.

On the night I heard “Atmospheres” performed, a well-packed Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was eerie in its hush. The audience remained in rapt, transported silence. When the piece was over, the crowd erupted, amazed. I have never before sat with such attentive listeners for a subscription concert by a major American orchestra playing uncompromising contemporary music.

There appear to be several reasons why this occurred. One was that an unusual amount of fuss was made over Ligeti. Although the Philharmonic’s events surrounding the festival weren’t extensive or especially well-planned, they were effective. A photography exhibit personalized the composer. Excellent program notes by Paul Griffiths made the music apprehensible and exciting.

And superb performances made dramatic points of the striking sounds, the quirkiness, the horror and the comedy, of this music. Salonen captivated players and subscribers alike.

And the one thing the Philharmonic did not do was pander to its audience. It didn’t even show “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which it very well might have. “Atmospheres” and Ligeti’s Requiem (also heard during the festival) were used to powerful effect in the film. But the Philharmonic let the music speak for itself, and by so doing, it took listeners to places they had had never been before.

Around Ligeti has proven that arts organizations can be the venues for new ideas. Audiences should be able to turn to them not for confirmation of what they already know but for new experiences. And the Los Angeles Philharmonic, if it can continue to generate trust from its audiences, is ideally poised to become a world leader. Even New York is starting to look West. Favorably reviewing the Ligeti festival in the New York Times, Bernard Holland noted that such programming would be “inconceivable” in New York’s more conventional orchestra life.

But one also wonders just how much the Philharmonic trusts itself to lead. Around Ligeti did not end as it began. It fizzled out once Salonen left town. Several weeks were allowed to pass before the final installment, and the momentum was lost. Some of the audience reportedly walked out on a Ligeti chamber concert last week. And the composer’s dazzling Piano Concerto, on the Philharmonic’s final program, was also a disappointment, despite the brilliant soloist, Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Guest conductor Leonard Slatkin simply lacked Salonen’s dynamism in the music or the programming.

The Philharmonic may also have lost some of the trust it had developed for Ligeti by unveiling the first Filmharmonic project while audiences were still atwitter with the Hungarian composer. The idea of commissioning filmmakers and composers to collaborate on a new kind of work that can be presented in live concert does not lack imagination (although it is not original). But rather than looking for innovation, the Philharmonic turned to the Hollywood establishment, entrusting the task of gathering talent and raising money to a movie agency. Many of the names cropping up for future Filmharmonic projects are those associated with inane summer blockbusters.

For the first Filmharmonic project, “1001 Nights,” the slick animation by Yoshitaka Amano and soundtrack-style cliches from David Newman revealed nothing new. Instead of revealing ways in which exceptional image can draw attention to interesting music (as had been the case with “2001” for Ligeti’s music 25 years ago), Filmharmonic needed film to make unexceptional music more striking.

It is hardly the orchestra’s role, however, to give artistic credence to Hollywood’s already overworked conventions. Take another step down the aesthetic ladder and you slip into the Hallmark card world of showing glossy nature pictures along with very popular music, as the Long Beach Symphony recently did to Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Copland’s “Appalachian Spring.”

The Philharmonic, right now, seems to want it both ways. It wants to be an arts leader. But it also is perfectly willing to slaver at Hollywood’s feet, eager for film world glamour and bucks. Hollywood, so happy to cash in on Godzilla and plunging meteors, is not the place to go for new ideas.

But the Philharmonic can be. Consider, in fact, what happened to cinema when a director who knew his Ligeti came up with “2001.” How about Around Ligeti II with a commission for Kubrick and you know whom?