Scandinavian angst, Japanese-style

Esa-Pekka Salonen did not show up in time for his Los Angeles Philharmonic concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Friday night. A conductor’s nightmare, perhaps, to be stuck on the freeway as the orchestra files onstage. But there was also something curiously comforting about the realization that it can happen to anyone. And more comforting still is the fact that the Philharmonic keeps a spare set of white tie and tails on hand. With about five minutes’ notice, assistant conductor Yasuo Shinozaki was in them.

Having Shinozaki lead Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” Suite No. 1 actually added an intriguing Japanese element to an all-Scandinavian program, which also included Sibelius’ Violin Concerto, with Midori as soloist, and Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony. There is a myth about Scandinavians, Salonen quipped to the audience later (he arrived in time to take over for the Sibelius and the Nielsen), that beneath their imperturbable veneer is “an abyss of angst.” Well, it’s true, he said, as he confessed that he had unleashed a string of Finnish swear words while sweating in the car.

Not to make too much of it, but Shinozaki impressed with just the opposite: an unflappable account of the popular Grieg Suite.

Unexpected situations like this can be exciting, the orchestra suddenly jarred out of its routine, not knowing what to expect. From Shinozaki’s warmly eloquent way with the Suite’s beginning section, “Morning Mood,” it was clear that the day was saved.

“Unflappable” barely begins to describe Midori’s authoritative certainty. She is a violinist who, to my taste, went from being a too blandly polished player in her teens to too compensatingly assertive in her 20s. However, in the Sibelius Violin Concerto, Midori, now in her 30s, got the balance just about right.

Full-blown Sibelian angst arrived a bit later than early in his turn-of-the-century Violin Concerto, once wickedly described as Tchaikovsky’s best. And there was no hint of irony in Midori’s straight-ahead, energetically expressive playing, or in her enormous tone and amazing intonation. But by emphasizing the orchestra’s subtly shaded dark wind colors and undercurrents of conflicting inner rhythms, Salonen inventively used Midori’s strength to underscore fascinating tensions in a score often thought Romantically one-dimensional.

Written in 1922, Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony is, on the other hand, an outright reflection of the insecurity that pervaded Europe and Scandinavia in the aftermath of World War I. A snare drum sits before the orchestra, and a percussionist obsessively beats a rhythmic tattoo dozens of times during the first of the symphony’s two long movements. The snare interrupts the violas, which want nothing more than to rock back and forth between two notes. It throttles easygoing dialogues between woodwind players, which are a hallmark of the Danish composer’s style. The insistent drum so profoundly disturbs the wonderful, humane cello-led melody of the movement’s second half that the whole work is thrown into chaotic disarray.

Nielsen picks up the pieces in the second movement with a new obsession for order, but nothing, and most notably a central fugue, fits into place. There is a final outburst of desperate joy, as if Nielsen were saying, I’ve just shown you the alternative, so you better rejoice in life as it is. The composer was not called a Danish Mahler for nothing.

Fifteen years ago, Salonen made an impressive recording of this score with the Swedish Radio Symphony, in which he demonstrated a gift for capturing Nielsen’s distinctive sound and for accentuating his unsettled forms. But a younger Salonen had less to say about the music than he does now. Friday’s performance was a real-life journey from bleak depression to mature appreciation of what Nielsen referred to as the inextinguishable life force. And on this occasion, not even L.A. traffic could quench it.