Salonen and Philharmonic Shape Masterful Mahler First

At the end of what has so far been an undistinguished Hollywood Bowl summer season for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the orchestra is coming into its own. Its energy and concentration are audible, it has programmed three weeks of intriguing repertory and the right conductor is back to lead it.

Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen returned to the podium of his orchestra Tuesday with the most provocative agenda of the 1999 summer, admirably played. Thursday, his program was more conservative but even more brilliantly performed.

Mahler’s First Symphony will mark Salonen’s and the Philharmonic’s season-opening in October. The thrilling preview heard at the Bowl on Thursday reinstated the work’s stature as the worthy older sibling in the canon.

Salonen shaped this cumulative performance cannily, giving each of the opening movements its special character yet also underlining their role as an extended prelude to the shattering and tightly constructed finale. The opening Langsam, immaculately and transparently played, set the stage for the emotional opening-up to come. The self-contained inner movements sang out beautifully yet without arriving at any destination. Everything led to the final fray.

In the stormy and magnificent finale, conductor and players used the full spectrum of orchestral colors--and the Philharmonic these days commands the widest possible dynamic range, wider than at any time in its remembered history--all under complete control. This range, from whispering to rage, always accomplished without the stridence of yore, is now, along with its virtuosic soloists, the orchestra’s most admirable musical resource.

This satisfying evening started on the same level of concentration and achievement with Helene Grimaud’s virtually definitive playing of Beethoven’s G-major Piano Concerto, assisted with depth and sensitivity by orchestra and conductor.

Grimaud, at 29, has become a heroic pianist; here, she accomplished a spiritual communicativeness with the piece and with her audience while making the physical components of piano-playing seem effortless. In the tradition of great Beethoven players--one was reminded of the late Rudolf Serkin throughout this seraphic performance--Grimaud loses herself in the style, every note a matter of life or death.

All this and a special bonus. For the first time, the Bowl’s giant film screen, leftover from the Tuesday concert, remained in place, and live pictures of the ongoing event--views of the players, the conductor and the soloist--added visual interest to the aural proceedings.