It’s Smooth Sailing in Turbulent Seas

Franz Welser-Most’s name appears on the Los Angeles Philharmonic schedule most seasons. That’s not likely to continue, and not because he has had a high cancellation rate due to recurring back problems.

In the fall, he becomes music director of the prestigious Cleveland Orchestra, and music directors of American orchestras are seldom available for--and sometimes contractually prevented from--guest-conducting other American ensembles. That alone makes the 42-year-old Austrian conductor’s visit to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of great interest. But Thursday night, he showed that he had a few tricks up his sleeve that were more than interesting in their own right.

Perhaps it was as a good-natured jab to Los Angeles that Welser-Most is concentrating on Finnish music for this week’s program, which begins with Kaija Saariaho’s “Du Cristal” and concludes with Sibelius’ First Symphony.

Three years ago, during the Cleveland Orchestra’s search, the previous Philharmonic management loudly boasted that its own music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, had turned down an offer for the post.

But Welser-Most’s programming of “Du Cristal” also appeared an act of respect for Salonen and the Philharmonic. Saariaho’s first work for orchestra, it was commissioned by the Philharmonic in 1990 and dedicated to Salonen. Now she is composing a new piece for Welser-Most to premiere during his first season in Cleveland. In Los Angeles, he could study the source of her orchestral sound, which is extraordinary.

“Du Cristal” (From Crystal) takes its title from biophysics and was written during the composer’s year in residence at UC San Diego. For about 19 minutes, it presents the sensation of being immersed in an exotic environment. I would imagine that this is what deep-sea diving might be like. The work presents a kind of sonic soup made of viscous, sensuously orchestrated, sustained chords that keep changing but not in readily perceptible ways.

But this comfortable harmonic sea through which the ear floats is full of incident. There are fleeting, colorful solos; individual instruments flash by like brilliant tropical fish. Exotic, deep bass wind instruments lure us into dangerous depths where we are subject to ominous waves of percussive thunder. Nothing is predictable but everything wondrous. Welser-Most and an expert and alert Philharmonic gave themselves over fully to these remarkable sounds.

The warm waters of sunny La Jolla clearly had an influence on Saariaho, and there was also an unusual southerly glow to Welser-Most’s Sibelius. The First Symphony opens with a long, somber melody for solo clarinet, underscored by a quiet but foreboding timpani roll. But Michele Zukovsky, playing as softly as a clarinet can be played, made it ravishing, as if a distant siren song floating over water, an irresistibly alluring call.

And then the music came on as a great, unstoppable rush. Sibelius, whose music (even in the early Romantic works like this symphony) can sound so strange and violent, here was almost embracing. Rapt melodies became occasions for great outpourings of expression.

This was a complex performance, so fast at times that syncopated inner lines were smudged like colors in a Turner painting. The Philharmonic played with the verve of a whirlwind.

In between Saariaho and Sibelius, Welser-Most offered a respite of classical calm with Haydn’s D-major Cello Concerto. Like the conductor, the soloist, Andrew Shulman, is someone we won’t be hearing again after this season. Hired with great fanfare as the orchestra’s principal cellist, he resigned last summer after but one season, although he agreed to stay on a second while the orchestra holds a new search. He leaves in June. The often-euphemistic reason given for his resignation, which came at the end of his probationary period, is the desire to explore career options.

Orchestras are large families all unhappy in their own ways, their inner dynamics a mystery to outsiders. From a listener’s point of view, however, the cello section under Shulman has been robust; his solos with the orchestra never let you down. In the Haydn, however, he didn’t seem to project quite as strongly as he does sitting among his section, nor did the high-lying parts of the first movement sound altogether certain. Still, there was a flexibility to his Haydn that slowly began to win one over. The slow movement was perfectly poised. By the Finale, the cello seemed a gleeful sailing ship, the musical seas that the Finnish composers stirred up were here entirely well behaved.

The personal dynamics underlying this performance may not be altogether comfortable, but the surface was a pleasure.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic program repeats tonight at 8 and Sunday at 2:30 p.m., $12 to $78, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown Los Angeles, (323) 850-2000.