Philharmonic glows in ensemble and details

The Los Angeles Philharmonic continued on its roll Thursday when Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted his second program this week at the Hollywood Bowl.

The orchestra is gearing up for its tour to Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival, and it’s also rehearsing daily in the new Walt Disney Concert Hall. Everyone seems to be especially up and alert and absolutely joyful in ensemble and in the multitude of details each person can contribute.

Stravinsky’s “Petrushka,” which opened the program, gave endless opportunities to revel in that ensemble and in those details. Salonen conducted with a sense of sweep, attention and exhilaration, plucking high trumpet accents out of the air, scooping off-rhythms from the basses, pulling accordion-like swells from the horns and generating those irresistible knee-slapping rhythms in the Coachmen’s Dance from everyone.

In portraying Petrushka’s isolation, Janet Ferguson’s flute solo was plaintive and full of character, and the strings responded with forlorn sighs. Don Green’s trumpet solo, depicting the brainless Ballerina, on the other hand, was sweet and perky.

Typically, the score looks forward and backward, appropriating ideas from Stravinsky’s “Firebird” and, in the Dancing Bear episode, anticipating the Entrance of the Sage in his “Rite of Spring.” Salonen knows how to make the connections.

Post-intermission, the program shifted to two works that evoked the sea: Sibelius’ “The Oceanides,” which alludes to Homeric not Finnish mythology, and Debussy’s “La Mer.”

The Sibelius score is challenging because so little seems to happen and so much is left to suggestion. It requires a sense of nuance and the feeling of motion -- potentially great motion and heft -- through minimalist means. Salonen kept the pulse moving forward without slighting the poetry in the score.

Debussy’s “La Mer,” by contrast, is a maelstrom of activity, and here again Salonen balanced forward momentum with attention to detail.

The amplification system initially made the strings sound tinny and puny. But by the middle of “Petrushka,” adjustments must have been made because the sound became more rich and nourished. If the orchestra comes off this well in the outdoor amphitheater -- and there are still chances to hear it there before the Edinburgh trip -- one can only imagine what it will sound like in Disney Hall.