Behrens Struggles to Summon Full Powers

After season-opening festivities last week, a palpable sense of anticlimax hovered over the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s newest program Thursday in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. No great disappointments awaited in this performance, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen and featuring German soprano Hildegard Behrens, but a lower level of energy prevailed than last week, and there were many more empty seats.

Before the concert, Philharmonic managing director Deborah Borda announced that Behrens would sing despite having a bad cold, and asked the audience’s indulgence. Such an announcement might have caused trepidation but operatic insiders know that Behrens, in a long and distinguished career, has more than once triumphed over adversity.

As it turned out, the first of Behrens’ two mighty challenges, the final scene from Strauss’ “Salome,” demonstrated no cause for complaint. Behrens commands all the resources of tone, textual identification and probing intelligence this role requires. She delivered the words with pungent articulation and coloration, and with the subtext of madness the character demands.

Behrens, in pacing this performance, went beyond the complicated requirements of Salome’s craziness and into the real subject of this monologue: lust that has been satisfied. Horrific or not the young Princess of Judea has got her reward and temporarily revels in it. This performance, authoritatively conducted by Salonen and played expertly, showed all the facets in the great climax.

The singer’s indisposition did make itself apparent later, in the “Liebestod” from Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.” Here, Behrens’ condition--palpably less than fresh, and fatigued to boot--decreed the quavery and sometimes faltering sounds she produced in Isolde’s “Mild und leise,” this most exposed demonstration of Wagnerian lyricism.

The purely orchestral part of this performance, devoted to excerpts from Act 3 of Wagner’s “The Twilight of the Gods” and to Strauss’ familiar tone poem, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” received careful, generally uninspired, treatment.

Given the Philharmonic’s long expertise in this repertory, a quarter-hour of “Twilight of the Gods” is always welcome.”Zarathustra,” for years a signature piece of the orchestra’s, sounded less interesting than usual, its component parts lacking cohesion, its longueurs short on tightness, its continuity often unclear.

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The L.A. Philharmonic repeats this program, 2:30 p.m., Sunday, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. $12-$78. (323) 850-2000.