A New Description of Salonen: Angeleno

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s new piece for massive orchestra, “Foreign Bodies,” is terrific. It bursts forth with energy, color and intelligence, with the exuberance of a composer who can barely contain himself. It was commissioned by Finnish Radio, written for the Finnish Radio Symphony and the Finnish conductor, Jukka-Pekka Sarasate, who premiered it in Germany last summer. It is the music of a composer from Finland who is no longer, strictly speaking, a Finnish composer. For its American premiere Thursday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Salonen conducted it as the opening of the last program of the Los Angeles Philharmonic season. The music came home.

“Foreign Bodies,” Salonen explained to the audience before conducting it, comes from his fascination with the way a foreign element can enter into a system and cause change. That is true of machines and of living organisms. For Salonen, 10 years in Los Angeles have infected the complex mechanisms of his music. In “Foreign Bodies,” he throws monkey wrenches into the works and delights at the controlled chaos and surprising new elements that result.

There are three connected movements--”Body Language--Language--Dance.” The first is an orchestral reworking of the “Mecanisme” movement of Salonen’s recent piano piece “Dichotomie,” in which the pianistic flourishes burst out into intense, brilliant instrumental colors. “Language”--derived from a recent Swedish choral work “Djupt i rummet” (Deep in space/room)--is short and slow and weird. Its gorgeous outer parts have an otherworldly glow, as strangely tuned cellos and basses play ghostly harmonies. The center is almost like a folk tune that very quickly goes awry in furious scales.

“Dance” is where all hell breaks loose. One of Salonen’s metaphors for “Foreign Bodies” is that of a computer virus and how it insinuates itself into a machine. The virus here takes the shape of John Adams-like chords in the horns that rhythmically throw off the rest of the orchestra. There is resistance at first--as Salonen resisted the influence of Minimalism when he first arrived in Los Angeles--but finally the whole orchestra seems to shake to life in a joyous bacchanalian explosion.

Brilliantly played though “Foreign Bodies” was Thursday, not every effect worked. For the addition of an organ to take the final climax over the top, a grand instrument is required, not the puny electronic imitation wheeled onto the pavilion stage. Some of the percussion instruments also failed to register in this hall. A true Los Angeles piece, “Foreign Bodies” awaits a less “foreign” acoustic, such as what is expected from Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Salonen put his new work in another kind of seemingly foreign environment, following it with two Russian works--Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. But, in fact, “Foreign Bodies” seemed its own kind of virus infecting all that followed it with a fabulous vitality. The soloist in Prokofiev’s seldom-heard concerto was Yefim Bronfman, who happened to have been the pianist who gave the first European performances of “Dichotomie” (it was written for Gloria Cheng, who premiered it here last season).

As if possessed by demonic energy , Bronfman followed the “Foreign Bodies” blowout with one of his own. There were lyrical moments of beauty to be sure, but what will stick in memory is the sheer enormousness of his playing of the first movement cadenza, one of the most extravagant in all the literature, in which the bulky Russian pianist seemed to possess as much sonic strength as the whole orchestra.

It was a long program, and some in the audience left, evidently feeling that they had already had an evening’s worth of excitement, and that a Tchaikovsky warhorse symphony would be a letdown. They were wrong. This was Tchaikovsky’s Fourth as I have never heard before. Anyone looking for Russian heart-on-sleeve sentiment might have cause for concern. But to hear the symphony played with the same attention to rhythmic detail, dynamics and instrumental color that Salonen brings to Stravinsky, Ligeti and his own music was to experience it as something new.

The Philharmonic’s playing was extraordinary, as if, with the experience of the Salonen sound in their ears, they, too, were hearing it for the first time. There is much about Salonen that has changed in his decade in Los Angeles. But the last thing that anyone would have predicted is that this Finnish ultra-Modernist would become not just one of America’s most accessible and interesting composers but also, of all things, a great Tchaikovsky interpreter. Make every effort you possibly can to hear this concert.

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The Los Angeles Philharmonic program repeats today, 8 p.m., Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, $15-$55, (949) 553-2422, and Sunday, 2:30 p.m., Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., $12-$78. (323) 850-2000.