LOS
ANGELES, CALIF – The Nov. 16 concert by the Los Angeles
Philharmonic was memorable for the superb orchestral playing as well
as for the presence of a great violinist. The three Nordic pieces
on the program found their ideal interpreter in the L.A. Phil’s
Finnish-born conductor/artistic director Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite had all
the requisite pastoral charm and vivacity that the score demands and
more. Aase’s Death, marked ‘andante doloroso’, was unforgettable
for its quietly shimmering sonorities, like a translucent dark veil
on a bereaved lover.
The dark force again re-asserted itself in the
Sibelius Violin Concerto, here given a rapturously serene and
intimate account by Midori and the Philharmonic musicians, who at
times played like chamber musicians. It is a tribute to Midori’s
mastery that in concert her playing has all the precision one would
expect in the studio – exceptionally clean and precise, not least
above the stave. The main lyrical themes of the first two movements
were taken at leisurely tempos and built up gradually to rapt
intensity, and the coda of the first movement was among the most
thrilling I have ever heard. The finale, adhering to Sibelius’
exact marking “allegro ma non tanto”, was again remarkable for the
clean precision of her playing, with detail sharply drawn even in
the most thorny bravura passages.
Carl Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony is a dark
but poetic work that calls for a rich and velvet body of strings
like an atmospheric sea painting. Here it received a first-rate
reading by the Philharmonic. The mournful solo clarinet (superbly
played by Michelle Zukovsky) in the opening set the ominous tone for
the snare drum insurgence that was too come. The brief romantic
interlude had the soft radiance of the Northern Light in the
otherwise desolate seascape.
The concert will repeat at 2:00pm, Sunday,
Nov.17.
Truman
C. Wang is editor of Classical Voice.
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