Welcome Visits From Salonen

If you want to hear Salonen conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic during his sabbatical year, you will have to do it via CD. And that has just gotten easier with three recent releases, and more are on the way (discs of Hindemith, Bach transcriptions and John Adams’ “Naive and Sentimental Music” are in the can).

The Mullova concerto disc has been out in Europe since 1997, and only now has Philips made it available domestically (maybe in part because the Russian violinist has a larger following overseas), but it finally corrects an outrageous situation considering the importance of the release. Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, part of his Neoclassical period, gets its most exciting and pointed recording ever, with Mullova and Salonen impressively dramatic and precise. The Bartok Second Violin Concerto, one of the century’s two or three greatest violin concertos, is much recorded, but again this is among the finest versions. Playing with ferocious intensity, Mullova finds the center of the score’s somber soul, while Salonen misses no detail in probing the depths of Bartok’s eerie orchestral world. Recorded at unusual venues for the Philharmonic (Long Beach Terrace Theater and a Hollywood sound stage), the sound has special bite.

The two Shostakovich piano concertos are unlikely fare for Salonen, but Bronfman is on home turf. The youthful, quirky first one is spectacularly played by Bronfman and accompanied with theatrical spark by Salonen (along with dazzling trumpet solos by the just-retired Thomas Stevens). The Second is perhaps a touch too dry orchestrally, but Bronfman is as engaging as ever. And there is all the juice you could ever want from the Juilliard in the more tormented chamber music.

For “The Song of the Earth,” Mahler’s late symphony built around extended symphonic songs to German versions of Chinese texts, Salonen follows the less common practice of using a baritone instead of a mezzo-soprano (Bernstein did that as well with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau), and Skovhus sings the final half-hour song, “Das Abschied” (The Parting) with nearly as much sensitivity as his German predecessor.

But the main news is Domingo in his first Mahler recording and his first collaboration with Salonen. Although he brings appropriate Wagnerian fervor, there is also a hint of the generic Domingo. That may be in response to Salonen’s analytical conducting, in which inner lines come out with a fine clarity but the heart-rending emotions are understated. Still, this makes a nice complement to the great performances by Bernstein, Walter and Klemperer; and let us hope it signals a future of cooperation between Salonen’s Los Angeles orchestra and Domingo’s Los Angeles Opera.