The Philharmonia Orchestra & Esa Pekka Salonen

[pjme]

Last Sunday, I went to a concert in London's Royal Festival Hall.
(The extremely warm weather turned the City into a bustling busy bee hive - mamma mia - compared to that activity, Brussels and Antwerp are sleeping provincial villages...)
Anyway, the RFH/Philharmonia O. has ( noblesse oblige) a Messiaen program and they had prepared an interesting combination of works:

André Jolivet ( Messiaen's friend and co- founder of La jeune France ( with Daniel Lesur and Yves Baudrier - 1936) wrote his 5 Ritual danses in 1938-39 for piano and orchestrated them in 1940. As far as I'm concerned , they make for very effective concertmusic.
Echoes of -possibly- Algerian flute melodies give the slow movements an hypnotic, incantatory character. If the fast movements bear the influence of Strawinsky, they "sound" very differently - the orchestra is almost like a massif big band.The last movement, a Funeral danse is a slow procesional that builds towards a crashing climax - cut of shortly.

Messiaen's short "OIseaux exotiques" was played with brilliance and muscular power by a young Russian pianist, Tamara Stefanovich. Personally, I don't find it Messiaen's most memorable piece, but seeing it performed is impressive. The piano is accompanied by a small group of woodwind, brass and percussion.

After the interval, the Philharmonia, au grand complet, performed Strawinsky's Sacre. Both Salonen and the orchestra were suddenly on familiar grounds and the performance was stunning . I completely forgot time, felt really "in" the music.
A beautiful and very interesting evening.

( Before the concert, I visited the Horniman Museum, near Forest Hill. In this beautiful 19th century relic ( Horniman tried to show the unknown world, earth,sky and sea, in the rooms of his 1901 extravaganza). New buildings have been added, but most of the original atmosphere is still there... An Indian Festival was in full swing - the rooms resounded with the strangests sounds, from computer generated soundbites to the soft whisper of sitars and small; handoperated organs...)

Peter

[bhodges]

Peter, this sounds like a great concert (not to mention that gentle Indian prelude at the museum).  I don't know the Jolivet at all, and it sounds like excellent programming to follow those dances with the Stravinsky.

I've heard Salonen do Le Sacre several times with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and really admire what he does with it.  (I'd almost venture to say it's one of his "signature" pieces.) 

--Bruce

[pjme]

Hi Bruce, that's exactly what I experienced. The Philharmonia is a top professional orchestra ofcourse, and their performance of Jolivet and Messiaen was beyond reproach. But Pierre Boulez performed the Jolivet Dances in 2006 with the (new ) Conservatoire orchestra ( a student orchestra) and the sheer concentration of these young musicians made for even more excitement and passion.

Jolivet recorded the Dances himself for Erato . That performance is still available in a 4 CD box (Sony Warner). Not the best sound, nor the best orchestra ( Radio France /Orchestre Philharmonique) - but at least it's there!
I'm very excited that Salonen chose this work. Jolivet isn't exactly a popular composer and he deserves the attention. Stylistically he went through more stages than Messiaen - but I rank his best works very highly : the 2 cello concerti, the violinconcerto, symphony nr 3, the Suite en concert for flute & percussion, the pianosonatas, Cérémonial ( à la mémoire de Varèse) for percussion ...
I wish a soprano would record "Songe à nouveau rêvé" a big cycle on poems by Antoine Goléa, and the very beautiful cantata "Le coeur de la matière" after Teilhard de Chardin....

I briefly spoke with Jolivet's daughter Christine - she's the driving force behind the this website :

http://www.jolivet.asso.fr/

THe Philharmonia and Salonen are in Luxemburg tonight - at the spectacular new "Philharmonie"

http://www.philharmonie.lu/en/home/home.php

[Greta]

Wow, that Luxembourg hall is beautiful! 

I noticed the Philharmonia has unveiled their plans for their first season with Salonen as Principal Conductor, and they are embarking on an ambitious project examining the music and culture of Vienna between 1895 and 1935, which will run about a year and a half in several overseas and states locations. It will delve into the art and music of that period with "...partnerships with galleries and museum collections in Vienna, London and New York. The project aims to present the music of Mahler, Schoenberg, Zemlinsky and Berg in its historical and social context, and alongside the art, craft, design, architecture, literature, philosophy and science of the period..." Sounds intriguing.

I've heard Salonen do Le Sacre several times with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and really admire what he does with it.  (I'd almost venture to say it's one of his "signature" pieces.)

The LA Phil has released some details about their next (his last) season, and it's like a Stravinsky-palooza. Fitting, I think! Salonen's farewell concert I know will be Symphony of Psalms with a semi-staged (Sellars) Oedipus Rex. Naturally some Le Sacre and Firebird in there somewhere, as well many other names he often collaborates with, looks like a fun season on the way out there too.

[jochanaan]

I'd love to have snuck into that concert!

[M forever]

I hope the Philharmonia doesn't suffer as much quality loss under Salonen as the LA Philharmonic did. If you look beyond the superficial hype, the orchestra has noticeably become worse over his tenure. They used to have a rather special sound among American orchestras which I also heard a couple of times live in the late 80s and early 90s. Now, that is mostly gone. The strings are thin and wiry and often not well together, the winds don't have much ensemble culture anymore either. Lots of booboos during the concerts, too, mistakes happen, but  Most of the Salonen concerts I heard in the past 5 years in LA were mostly mediocre to bad, a lot of posing in front of a badly rehearsed orchestra more or less on autopilot. With music like Stravinsky, that is not so obvious because even good youth orchestras these days can play Le Sacre brilliantly, but even that doesn't come across so great in the recent DG recording. Some of the Sibelius cycle concerts I heard last year were just bad, on a low provincial level, total disconnect between the conductor and the orchestra which poked its way through the music - not their fault though. It was obvious that he had only superficially rehearsed, especially the many very detailed string passages were played way worse than what a well trained youth orchestra can do - as the Sibelius Academy Orchestra demonstrated during their cycle. Transitions were often smudgy and indecisive, longer phrases didn't happen or went nowhere. There was a lot of posing and freaking out by Salonen, it was almost embarrassing to see him headbanging to the music. The 1st was still pretty good, it "happened" to a certain degree and there were glimpses of what the LAPhil can still sometimes do. The Sibelius Academy concert was extremely good though, and it showed that Salonen is someone who can shape substance he already finds - as he did with the orchestra which was obviously meticulously prepared, what was heard was probably the result of many weeks of training before the trip to America - but he can not build it. He simply lacks the technical expertise which even the most talented conductor can only acquire over many years of hard work from a lower level up. We have seen it many times that talented and smart people are put in front of world class orchestras and "look good", but that has nothing to do with acquiring the ability to build a performance according to a detailed vision when the orchestral substance is not (yet) there. Conductors who have allowed themselves the time to learn and mature and prove what they can do with a less than "top" class ensemble and who have developed a musical style and conducting personality of their own, such as, to cite just a few examples, Rattle, Dutoit, or Jansons, all of which have built up mediocre to good orchestras and drawn very good results from them, just go much further in the end, no matter what one might think of their interpretations of particular works. Conducting, just like playing an instrument, is mostly a craft, and it takes a long time to learn that. Salonen may be very talented and he is certainly very smart and knows how to play the career game (supported by very influential managing powers in the background), but he doesn't have much to offer that any more or less competent time beater can't do, too. I think he realizes that himself and absails himself to London where he has an ensemble with much more substance and technical abilities of its own before the LA thing becomes too obviously stale.