Philharmonic Shows Off Its Line for Export

Esa-Pekka Salonen returned to the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night to lead the first of four programs this week and next that contain the works the Los Angeles Philharmonic will take on its European tour later in the month. And things began looking up.

As if to indicate that the program would not be business as usual, the orchestra was dressed in its formal concert-hall attire of black, rather than the usual white jackets the players favor outdoors. A spokesperson for the Philharmonic cautioned reading anything into a costume change, saying that it was only for publicity photos. Still, the players, who seemed to have already fallen into late summer doldrums on opening night, must have felt different in formal attire.

They certainly sounded different with their music director on the podium. And Salonen’s wake-up call reached the far corners of the amphitheater, from the sound booth, where the amplification is controlled, to the attentive, appreciative audience.

Tour programs tend toward excessive showiness, overeager weightiness or some surprises, the out-of-town orchestra determined to impress in whatever way it can. However, the Philharmonic’s tour agenda is neither particularly spectacular nor uncommon. The only rarity is Shostakovich’s Soviet-inflamed Second Symphony, which will be used as foil to Beethoven’s populist Ninth at tonight’s concert.

Most of this tour will comfortably settle on colorful, well-liked works from the early 20th century. On paper, it looks unusually cautious for an orchestra proud of its reputation for adventure; and, inexplicably, there is nothing by Salonen, whose music you would imagine to be one of the orchestra’s selling points.

Tuesday’s program was certainly a cautious one, with tried-and-true Debussy, Bartok and Prokofiev. The soloist in Bartok’s First Piano Concerto was Yefim Bronfman, who recorded Bartok’s three piano concertos with Salonen and the Philharmonic in 1994. Though that disc won a Grammy, I’ve always found it a little too fast and insubstantial. Likewise the Philharmonic’s recording of Debussy’s “Iberia,” from 1996, is appealing but slightly generic.

It was good to walk into the Bowl with those recordings fresh in the ear, because it was immediately evident, even given the amplification, just how much Salonen and his band have grown. “Iberia” was extraordinary, full of Salonen’s distinct musical personality. Exotic woodwind lines in the first movement, “In the Streets and Byways,” were made to sound as eventfully pungent and quirky as Salonen’s own woodwind orchestral writing often is. The slow movement, “Perfumes of the Night,” heavy-handed on the recording, was taken at almost exactly the same slow speed, but now, beautifully sustained, became compellingly erotic. The spectacularly played last movement, “Morning of a Festival Day,” was unadulterated adrenaline.

Salonen and Bronfman have not slowed down their Bartok; if anything the accelerations, as in the development section of the concerto’s first movement, are more daring. But, as in the Debussy, there is a new confidence, a new level of expression, a new immediacy. Throwing his weight into some of Bartok’s most percussive piano writing, Bronfman has become like a force of nature.

For Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet,” Salonen has selected his own suite, with 11 numbers from the full ballet, encapsulating the Shakespearean narrative. Everything always sounds better at the Bowl after intermission, and the Prokofiev was no exception, as something of the visceral intensity of a large orchestra was captured by the amplification. And it was visceral intensity that Salonen was after, in an operatically vivid and richly textured reading that enthusiastically exploited the orchestra’s big sound.

Thanks to the necessity of preparing for a tour, these four concerts with Salonen will be better rehearsed and more interestingly thought out than the typical Tuesday or Thursday at the Bowl. The first of them also proved that the great outdoors can still accommodate great music and music making. Audiences turned off by ever increasing Bowl commercialism, they should well reconsider--at least through next week.

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic, tonight at 8, Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood, $1-$76. (323) 850-2000.