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Die-hards in the East Coast orchestral world, and there still are plenty, have a hard time dealing with the San Francisco Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic, which gave a splendid concert Wednesday night at Benaroya Hall.
The orchestras are of such brilliance, led by forward-thinking maestros (one American, one Finnish), the traditionalists don't know how to classify them. Certainly not in the top five (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Chicago), at best second-tier, despite their steady record of superb performances, recordings and national and international touring. Admired they are, but to some, the orchestras are not "there there," to borrow that phrase, once again, from Gertrude Stein.
While the San Francisco Symphony is, unfortunately, a stranger to Seattle. Los Angeles is not, since the opening of Benaroya Hall and the creation of the Visiting Orchestra Series, which functions under the wing of the Seattle Symphony. Esa-Pekka Salonen, now in his 14th season with Los Angeles, has evolved into a conductor of insight, wide-ranging intellect and keen musical instincts.
The program was a curious mix of the old and the relatively new: Beethoven's Eighth and Fifth symphonies with Witold Lutoslawski's Fourth Symphony in the middle. In the concert hall, the three works played off one another, making us hear Beethoven a little differently and giving Lutoslawski unexpected weight.
Although nothing can be more tried and true than Beethoven symphonies, there was no hint of that at the concert. Each was given ample doses of freshness and new insights. In the past, one would have never considered Salonen a conductor of merit when it came to the German master. His metier was more early 20th century. But Salonen has matured -- he is now in his late 40s -- and grown into the standard orchestral repertory.
The Eighth had an admirable "lightness of being," inflected with color and supple phrasing, transparency and youthful exuberance. The Fifth, which closed the concert, was admirable for the right reasons. The reading was, of course, forthright and energetic, but Salonen provided gravity without heaviness and intensity without hysteria. He found ways to be emphatic but also lyrical, to blend the soft-grained with the loud, the extroverted with the introverted.
The Lutoslawski, to be played without a break, was premiered in 1993 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which commissioned it, with the composer on the podium. He died the following year in Warsaw, where he was born in 1913. Since then the orchestra has played the work often, at home and on tour. It deserves that kind of exposure.
There were plenty of solos, played very well, but the perfornance was not quite note perfect.
The enthusiastic audience was rewarded with encores by Sibelius and Stravinsky.
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