LOS ANGELES — Conductor-composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, recently appointed creative director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall, devised a program on Jan. 10, including works by Sibelius, Debussy, and Scriabin, that looked promising on paper. Even after Gabriella Smith’s new violin concerto was postponed, her Rewilding, which was given its well-received premiere with Salonen at the helm of the San Francisco Symphony in June 2025, seemed an intriguing substitute.
So why was this first concert in his latest role so underwhelming?
Part of the problem was a certain quality of stasis in each score. Take the concert’s curtain-raiser, Sibelius’ 1914 The Oceanides. A pleasant-enough melodic piece commissioned by then-Yale music school dean Horatio Parker (Charles Ives’ teacher), Sibelius’ sea was largely calm, perhaps reflecting his happy visit to the United States. One missed the invigorating contrasts found in a similar maritime depiction, Debussy’s La mer.
Likewise, Smith’s Rewilding emerged as an abstract work conjuring an elemental stasis in its minimalist unison orchestral writing. It left much, maybe too much, to listeners’ imaginations. The score’s connection to environmental themes often seemed tenuous, with little in the way of compelling harmonic ideas or buoyant rhythms. On the other hand, there wasn’t a hint of didacticism in this single-movement, 24-minute score for large orchestra.
Before Salonen took the podium, Smith, 33, gave a passionate introduction to Rewilding from the stage. She’s a boots-on the-ground volunteer helping to restore ecosystems and ravaged habitats. The piece began invitingly with foreboding passages in the brass and skittering winds and flutes. Perhaps these suggested birds chirping or in flight, but no melody emerged. The highlight was a kind of nature cadenza in which a variety of percussion sounds — twigs breaking, walnuts being swished in a metal bowl, col legno tapping of strings — communicated a musical analogue to the natural world. At one point, the strings were asked by Smith to “be a frog,” ribbiting with optimistic authority.
In general, Salonen and the Philharmonic kept Smith’s sprawling sound world together, but other than assembling interesting symphonic gestures and patterns, her score didn’t give listeners much to take home. Unfortunately, some of the composer’s theatrical percussion effects, including wooden mallets applied to the spokes of whirring bicycle wheels, could not be seen, at least from the front-facing orchestra level.
One exiting couple called her extended techniques “music for a torture chamber.” The comment reminded me of composer Jerry Goldsmith’s advice to a UCLA student after looking at one of his scores: “Where’s the tune, bub?” Surely birds have the gift of song, but strangely, Rewilding, like a lot of contemporary art music, was mostly withholding.
After intermission came the most purely lovely work of the night, Debussy’s sinuous oratorio, La damoiselle élue (1887-88). Setting a luxuriant tempo, Salonen summoned as much orchestral color from the orchestra as possible, but again, there was a lack of momentum-producing variety and contrast.
Soprano Liv Redpath as The Blessed Damozel and mezzo-soprano Jingjing Xu as the Narrator sang in superbly idiomatic French, confirmed by my French-speaking seatmate. Even with the full orchestra at their backs, both singers generally projected well. But since the solo vocal writing is mostly declamatory, it lacked emotional nuance. The choral writing, while easy on the ear and delivered by a fine LA Master Chorale under artistic director Grant Gershon, proved similarly static.
In Scriabin’s marvelous Prometheus, Poem of Fire, the Chorale provided a wordless chorus. The mystical-eccentric composer had grand plans for performances of this single-movement, approximately 23-minute work, reportedly wondering if a colorful light show and even perfumed scents would enhance his striving, all-embracing attempt at a synthesis of the arts.
Salonen had a hard time sustaining a sense of drama in this determinedly exotic-sounding score, delivering a disappointing performance undermined by an unnecessary and distracting light show on a hanging crystal curtain above the stage. (Oddly, there was no health warning about the pulsing, strobing lights.) Gimmicks almost always diminish the effect of a self-sufficient work. Jean-Yves Thibaudet muscled through the virtuoso obbligato piano part, and the Philharmonic bravely accompanied the changing colors.
According to a publicity release, Salonen’s five-year role as creative director includes advising the Philharmonic on such decisions as festival design, programs, commissions, residencies, and fellowships. He will also conduct and curate six weeks of Philharmonic concerts per season. Salonen, who is 67, remains a cerebral, communicative conductor with many musical virtues, among them a reserved sense of fun and a strong grasp of a score’s architecture, but his multi-disciplinary artistic experiments have been only fitfully successful.
Over the next seasons, one hopes he’ll keep lyricist and producer Arthur Freed’s warning in mind: “Don’t try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough.”
