A captivating new ‘Sculpture’ in sound

The Walt Disney Concert Hall has proved an inspirer of lasting, invigorating music. Steven Stucky’s Second Concerto for Orchestra received a Pulitzer Prize. Steve Reich’s “You Are (Variations)” was a Pulitzer finalist and has just been released on a winning Nonesuch disc. Esa-Pekka Salonen’s “Wing on Wing” highlights a high-profile Deutsche Grammophon recording. John Adams’ “Dharma at Big Sur” has lots more performances lined up and a recording comes out next year.

Magnus Lindberg’s “Sculpture,” which the Los Angeles Philharmonic commissioned (in partnership with the Koussevitzky Music Foundation) and premiered Thursday night, seems just as likely to last. The score is sophisticated yet immediately engrossing, but some Disney Hall enthusiasts may need to get past the title.

With the growing controversy about the giant bow tie by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen currently being installed in front of the hall, not everyone wants more sculpture at Disney. The building, for them, is enough. Of course, it is the building that Lindberg is thinking about. The building -- and its sound.

The Finnish composer is a great maker of bracing sonic structures, some of which can get enjoyably out of hand. Enjoying a bit of banter with Philharmonic music director Salonen on stage before the premiere, Lindberg spoke of his great enthusiasm for the architecture and acoustics of Disney. His instinct was to write fanfares. The hall makes him happy and his angels wanted to whoop it up. His devils kept him in check. He left out the violins and concentrated on low instruments, lest he sound too blatantly enthusiastic.

The result is a lot of low instruments -- pairs of contrabassoons, pairs of tubas and Wagner tubas, pairs of pianos and harps mellowing out the whoops for joy. The violas are the highest strings, which made principal violist Dale Hikawa Silverman concertmaster for the performance.

At the end the organ came rumbling in, lingering “Zarathustra”-like in its low register. Tubas and other brass instruments took positions around the hall. The seats and floors vibrated at frequencies that felt healthful for the body. Many tickets for the Philharmonic in Disney are not cheap, but when you throw in musical shiatsu, you’ve got a bargain.

The orchestral writing is that of a master. Disney Hall is especially happy with bass notes, and Lindberg gave it its fill. The bouncy fanfare figures are not blatant but more like a filigree. The instrumental texture is often fast-moving and complex. A Sibelius sense of mysterious winds blowing everything around is strong at first.

In the middle, “Sculpture” turns into a miniature concerto for orchestra, focusing on different instrumental sections competing to be the most dazzling. The piece climaxes with rousing Stravinskyan rhythms. The score’s 23 minutes fly by. The performance was spectacular.

It seemed the only thing that could follow “Sculpture” would be “Rite of Spring.” Salonen chose Beethoven’s “Eroica.” “Sculpture” was supposed to have premiered in 2004, but it was not finished in time, so now it has become part of the orchestra’s “Beethoven Unbound” series, which pairs new music with Beethoven’s symphonies.

The “Eroica,” Beethoven’s third, followed on the heels of Salonen’s performances of the first two symphonies last week. As he did in those earlier symphonies, Salonen made sure that textures were clear, that when Beethoven did something striking with harmony, it could still sound surprising, even if you know the symphony practically by heart. His rhythmic tautness was another familiar benefit.

But most unusual about the performance is the way it so naturally included many different performance traditions. Salonen let the first movement be lean and quick, almost as if he were using period instruments. The famous funeral march was slow and full of riveting romantic expressivity. The Scherzo, with its tricky meters, sounded proto-Stravinsky. And everything came together in a lusciously meticulous, beautifully colored, stirring Finale. It’s a set of variations, and Salonen made a show of unity out of diversity.

Postmodern Beethoven is not a category I’ve heard of before. Salonen may be inventing it.

*

Los Angeles Philharmonic

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 2 p.m. Sunday

Price: $15 to $129

Contact: (323) 850-2000 or www.laphil.com/tickets