Philharmonic Delivers Vibrant ‘Firebird,’ Elegant Cello Concerto

The Los Angeles Philharmonic got lucky over the weekend. It happened to have scheduled Elgar’s affecting Cello Concerto. Written in 1919 but once thought a dated relic of a British composer’s Edwardian visions, it was given a new lease on life in the hip 1960s by Jacqueline Du Pre. And now it has another, thanks to its appearance in the prurient film “Hilary and Jackie,” which scrutinizes the cellist’s life.

But it was just as well to put Du Pre out of mind Friday afternoon at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for the first of the concerto’s three performances. The soloist on this occasion was Ronald Leonard, who has been the orchestra’s highly respected principal cellist since 1975 and who retires from his post at the end of the season. The program, which also included the score to Stravinsky’s ballet “The Firebird,” intended to tell us something about the century.

“The Firebird,” which was written in 1910, was Stravinsky’s first major work and is extraordinarily vivid music of possibilities for a new century. Its colors, its uses of instruments, its trailblazing harmonies, its modernizing of folk melodies, its novel way of developing ideas--all were new and exciting and full of hope and promise.

Elgar’s concerto, on the other hand, was his last major completed work, and it is autumnal, lyrical music for a genteel world that seemed, for an aging composer after World War I, exhausted, finished.

The old and the new were made very clear. Leonard, with courtly accompaniment from Esa-Pekka Salonen and the orchestra, performed the Elgar with a graceful combination of emotion and elegance. His sound is rich and grand; his phrasing, broad and musicianly. It was fine, distinguished playing, and a reminder of the sheer musicality he has brought to the cello section for so many years.

But vulgar as it may be to have Hollywood now selling Elgar with sex (or is it Elgar who helps sell the sex?), the concerto, frankly, can seem a little flat without it, especially when placed next to Salonen’s interpretation of “The Firebird.” Salonen has made the Stravinsky ballet one of the Philharmonic’s showpieces. This performance wasn’t, perhaps, the orchestra at its absolutely best, but close. There is a special vibrancy to its sound that carries through every section when it plays this work, and it seemed to derive a special excitement from the fact that groups of school children attended the matinee. Surprisingly attentive but not exactly exhilarated by the Elgar, they came to life during the Stravinsky.

Fooled by the giant climax at the end of the “Infernal Dance,” the kids burst into thrilled, sudden applause before quickly catching themselves for a quiet lullaby that follows. It was a marvelous moment. Electricity crackled in the air with the sense that here were listeners on the edge of their seats. It spurred on Salonen and the orchestra. The lullaby had a special luminosity; the ending of the ballet, an extra jolt from an already energized Salonen. The place went wild, and I’m sure that music entered into the lives of young people who hadn’t known that rock ‘n’ roll could be like this.

All that was missing was something new and invigorating tacked onto the short program to show them--as well as the seniors who make up the other half of the loyal Friday matinee audience--the lively possibilities of our own times.