By Howard Ho
Daily Bruin Contributor
Love’s triumph may seem all too hackneyed a theme for
modern listeners, but Saturday night the Los Angeles Philharmonic
forcefully revived it. Though Schoenberg may have been Brahms with
wrong notes, the Philharmonic placed the two great composers side
by side in a somewhat risky program. The result of this pairing
promptly melted away any doubts the listener might have as to the
existence of beauty in the world.
Schoenberg’s “Pelleas and Melisande” began the
concert with an ominous air. The tone poem was an early Schoenberg
work and, therefore, did not have the screeches and wails that his
later style demanded. Indeed, though the piece caused a bit of a
controversy in its premiere about 100 years ago, the emotions of
the music resonated today in a most loving manner. People who still
regard Schoenberg as the guy who destroyed classical music actually
ought to listen to his compositions.
The music depicts a love triangle that ends in tragic death.
Though composed in the early 1900s, it harkens back to the Romantic
era with its lush chromatic harmonies and orchestrations. For
example, the opening features only the winds and low string
instruments, making the violin entrance such a powerful statement
when it arrives.
The use of motifs, or recurring themes, plays a great role even
though they are not obvious melodies like those in Gershwin tunes.
In a Wagnerian mode, Schoenberg pulls out a piece that never
resolves, instead it aches endlessly for its fulfillment, which
never arrives.
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted quite intensely, especially at the
climaxes that dotted the musical landscape. The clarity of this
dense music found its way into a clean, but deeply felt
interpretation. The huge orchestra, including eight French horns,
four trumpets, five trombones and eight timpani, created an equally
large sound, aided with only a small microphone boost. The
40-minute piece stirred the imagination and allowed the
Philharmonic to show off with Schoenberg’s dazzling
orchestral colors.
The second piece of the night, however, focused on Helene
Grimaud, the French pianist who played earlier last year at the
Hollywood Bowl. In Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, Grimaud held the
stage with such passion that her applause would have lasted much
longer had the orchestra not left hastily. The piece began much as
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony begins, displaying Brahms’
devotion to the Beethovenian model. Both pieces are in D minor and
both end victoriously. In the concert, however, the victory was not
simply for that piece of music, but for the entire night at the
concert. In a sense, Brahms resolved Schoenberg.
The first two movements of the concerto seemed to be general
material, passionate but not terribly virtuosic in the way of
Rachmaninoff or even Chopin. Having been originally composed as a
sonata for two pianos, the concerto felt bare at times, though the
Philharmonic worked very hard to give it fullness. Grimaud sparkled
with the demanding trills and scalar passagework.
However, it wasn’t until the final movement that the whole
concerto and even the whole concert began to make sense. The
Philharmonic strategy seems to be play an old war horse last so
that you can make people stay for a riskier piece. Indeed, Brahms
provided the war horse and Schoenberg the element of risk. Yet the
concert worked on the even greater level of being the Romantic
answer to cynicism the same way Beethoven’s Ninth was his
answer to the disillusionment of the French Revolution.
Wiping away the cobwebs, Salonen’s Philharmonic seems ripe
and ready to make Los Angeles a major classical musical.