Salonen Renews Promise of Mahler’s First

We used to think of Mahler’s First Symphony as the somewhat puny, underdeveloped younger sibling of the Viennese composer’s massive later works. It was shorter than an hour and easy to like, so we never took it very seriously.

That was before Esa-Pekka Salonen discovered it. He first conducted it in a thrilling, fully realized performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in the summer of 1999. Subsequently, he took it, and the orchestra, on tour, then opened the fall season with it that October.

This week, he brings it back to the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s home at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Thursday night, the thrills continued.

We were mistaken, all those years, to discount the worth of this seminal Mahler piece. It predicts and underlines all the qualities of his subsequent symphonic canvases. And it contains, as heard in Salonen’s probing, cannily laid out reading, all the emotional wallop so deeply expanded, and consequently cherished, in the monumental later works.

What Salonen finds here--that we missed in many previous performances--is the richness of emotion, the many colorful feelings in each part of this tightly constructed monument. He allows the entirety to build in intensity through its four movements, saving the crowning series of climaxes for the stormy finale. But, along the way, he savors the wealth of details in each part and allows each movement its own glow and stylistic specificity.

The first half of this program was another pearl beyond price in the pure, unfettered, virtually definitive performance of Brahms’ Violin Concerto by soloist Hilary Hahn, 22. Hahn played this work on this stage three years ago, to justifiably high praise.

Thursday, she again made the work her own, and again did it selflessly. Technically immaculate, musically magisterial and in every moment communicative, this reading reinstated not only the work’s status as one of Brahms’ masterpieces but also as one long, unbroken song. Salonen and the Philharmonic collaborated wholeheartedly.

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Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A., tonight, 8 p.m., and Sunday, 1 p.m. $12-$78. Information, (323) 850-2000; tickets, (213) 365-3500.