L.A. Philharmonic takes a properly bleak approach

Death dominated Disney on Thursday night.

The occasion was the conclusion at Walt Disney Concert Hall of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Shostakovich cycle, begun five years ago in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The cycle’s chronology got a little out of order, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, who had originally planned to conduct all the composer’s symphonies, became more selective as the project progressed. Andrey Boreyko led the last symphony, No. 15, in November; James Conlon conducted the 13th two weeks ago.

In fact, of the last five symphonies, Salonen reserved only the 14th -- the darkest, strangest and most musically sophisticated -- for himself.

A string of songs for soprano and bass to texts about death by poets who died young, it uses only a small string orchestra and percussion. The composer scribbled it down feverishly from a sickbed in 1969. He had suffered his second heart attack and didn’t know whether he’d survive (he did, for another six years). His anger, evident on some level in all his symphonies, here seethed into every note of the 54-minute score as he railed against injustice -- that of the Soviet system and of his own dire circumstances. There is no black humor this time, just bleak blackness.

The performance, whatever one thinks of a composer who zealously showcased his own death and orchestrated the mourning of it with scorching intensity, was extraordinary. So too was the context in which Salonen placed this searing, unrelentingly grim symphony.

We’ve entered a Shostakovich year -- his 100th birthday will be in September. And you must have heard by now of the deliriously hyped Mozart year -- his 250th birthday was last week. So Salonen began with Mozart’s “Masonic Funeral Music,” five exquisite, sorrowful minutes written for a chamber orchestra of strings, winds (including three clarinet-like basset horns) and horns.

In between came, as a parallel to Shostakovich, Haydn’s penultimate symphony, No. 103. It’s known as the “Drumroll,” and although Haydn’s gracious 18th century symphonic hand was never nearly as heavy as that of a 20th century politically oppressed Russian, the timpani roll at the opening is strong stuff nonetheless, especially when startlingly played by the Philharmonic’s principal percussionist, Raynor Carroll. Haydn always found room for humor in his symphonies, but this one is among the more urgent, and Salonen emphasized its fervor.

The most impressive aspect of Shostakovich’s 14th Symphony is its acute austerity. The composer wrenches a serious amount of sonic anguish out of very little. The musical means are highly restricted. The melodic material is kept to a bare minimum. The small forces are used sparingly. The pitch ranges tend toward extreme high and low, with hardly anything from the middle until the ninth of the 11 songs.

The death-centered poems are by Lorca, Apollinaire, Rilke and Wilhelm Karlovich Kuchelbecker. Only the last is Russian; for the others, Spanish, French and German were translated into Russian. Shostakovich wrote for a fiery soprano and a profound bass. The Philharmonic found the ideally ferocious soprano, Tatiana Pavlovskaya, from the Kirov. If the popular baritone Matthias Goerne is on the light side vocally for this music, he made up for it with stirring dramatic strength.

Salonen conducted with an ear for sound. He didn’t torture his listeners with Shostakovichian melodrama, but neither did he shelter them from a despair that permits no comfort. The symphony is no requiem; it trusts no God; it finds nothing romantic in death; it casts an awful spell. If sounds could represent the putrid smell of decay, they would be these sounds. A small but steady stream of audience members left the hall throughout the performance, almost like a funeral procession.

Yet for all the distaste with which some may react to the 14th, it is remarkable music and unforgettable drama. Lorca’s corpses may be denied their Andalusian colors. Appollinaire’s lilies may lose their surreal beauty. Rilke’s lakes, valleys and plains may be nothing but bombed-out craters. But Shostakovich can, in a glissando of violins, in a few solo notes on the cello straining into its highest register, in a lonely chord on celesta, create an overpowering atmosphere. Bells toll. Woodblocks are the rattle of bones.

Pavlovskaya’s captivating anger and Goerne’s penetrating gloom made every uncomfortable line of poetry meaningful. They, like Haydn’s drumroll, forced attention. Pavlovskaya is ready for a major career.

In the short last song, to a Rilke text, soprano and baritone sing a duet of death’s constant presence and the impossibility of happiness. The ending is abrupt, and without even a second of silence Thursday, a bravo rang out. The tension in the hall had become too much.

Then in the lobby were pastries, courtesy of one of the Philharmonic’s sponsors hoping to drum up a little business. I doubt the company did very well. It wasn’t that kind of night.

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Los Angeles Philharmonic

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

When: 8 tonight

Price: $15 to $129

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