Defiance by Eastern European folk

Anyone who ever stepped off a train in an Eastern European capital during the Cold War immediately understood that life behind the iron curtain was grim. Smiles were not on public display. Whether or not the sun shone, dark clouds always seemed present and gray the pervasive color and mood. Nothing felt to an outsider further from the spirit of the people and the times than the carefree folk-art style imposed on composers by Stalin and his successors.

Yet for a concert Thursday night of music by Gyorgy Ligeti, Karel Husa and Witold Lutoslawski, given by the Los Angeles Philharmonic as part of its “Shadow of Stalin” series, a glittering, almost gaudy musical rainbow all but descended on Walt Disney Concert Hall. The performances conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen captured not the sad spirit of the times but an extraordinary vitality of spirit behind the scenes.

Ligeti’s “Concert Romanesc” (Romanian Concerto), little known and early (it was written in 1951 while the composer was in his late 20s), on the surface obeyed the official folk mandate. The 12-minute score’s dashing Romanian bits are directly in the tradition of Bartok and Kodaly, even if some of the “folk” tunes were invented.

But then there was the other business. Percussive chords zapped dancing peasants like bolts of lightning breaking up a festival. The ending to us, today, is the smile-making work of a budding avant-gardist. Some in the audience burst into bravos at the close of the furiously vibrant final dance, only to be shushed by Salonen.

A barely audible solo violin was still shimmering in a high harmonic. Then a horn in the orchestra mooed. Another horn player, hidden on a side terrace, mooed back. Salonen cued one, then the other. The violin kept squealing. A final stroke from the orchestra -- the hand of the dictator? -- shut them all up. Authorities in Budapest banned the work after a single rehearsal. Ligeti fled Hungary a few years later but didn’t let this small marvel of protest art out of the closet for many more. In the Los Angeles of 2007, it proved a big hit.

Husa’s “Music for Prague 1968,” which followed on the program, is more direct protest art. The Czech composer, who was born in 1921 and was on hand for the Disney performance, left Prague shortly after World War II and has been a composer in exile since. Most of his career has been spent teaching at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

Although much celebrated and winner of a Pulitzer Price for his Third String Quartet and a Grawemeyer Award for his Cello Concerto, Husa remains best known for “Music for Prague.” Written in response to the news of 500,000 Soviet troops quashing the “Prague Spring” -- the brief moment in 1968 when the Czechs thought the iron curtain might be lifting -- the score is loud, sad and a frankly spectacular aural assault on an old culture.

An old Hussite war song, familiar through its presence in Smetana’s symphonic tone poem “Ma Vlast,” pervades Husa’s symphonic study. So too do the bells of Prague that Husa told the audience he heard ring in sorrow when the Nazis invaded in 1939 and ring in joy when they were routed six years later. Bird song in flutes and piccolo serves as a symbol for Husa of freedom.

But oppression is the main sensation. The brass and strings hunker down. The tanks, all percussive thunder, roll in. It is gripping music and was grippingly played.

Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra, written in 1954, was supposed to be the friendly face of Cold War Poland. It pretty much is, in that it uses the resources of the orchestra to gloriously colorful effect.

Unlike Husa and Ligeti, Lutoslawski never left his homeland. He was luckier in that it was slightly easier for Polish composers to be experimental than it was for Hungarians or Czechs. But it still wasn’t that easy. Lutoslawski’s genius was to eventually develop a highly subtle and sophisticated style and get away with it.

But with the Concerto for Orchestra, he still pretty much had to toe the line, and it supposedly irked him that the work became his most played. The score, though, is next to impossible to resist, especially in the flickering changes of color and Lutoslawski’s unique ability to make melody coalesce out of thin air.

The Philharmonic is in great shape, and Salonen was in his element. Things clicked. A listener could not separate the music from its making. Salonen created a sense of occasion not only through making a program of these three works but through a celebration of sound.

A crescendo of five snare drums in Lutoslawski’s concerto felt like the breath of life vibrating through a great acoustic space. Martin Chalifour’s silvery violin solos in the Ligeti provided the sensation of Ariel in flight. All the orchestra, in fact, was on show.

Last weekend, DJs in Disney fiddled with the Stalin theme. The music was loud yet the effect curiously tame, Red Army chic as momentary fashion statement.

The Philharmonic was braver Thursday, and more timely, afraid of neither genuine shock nor awe.

mark.swed@latimes.com