Hollywood and high-brow meet at the Bowl under Leonard Slatkin

Various and sometimes contradictory lines – classical music, historical Los Angeles and the pop cultural ambit both helped to foster on celluloid – made a rare convergence into the dual-image of Leonard Slatkin’s guest appearance on the rostrum of the Hollywood Bowl. As I watched, it was tempting to describe the occasion as “historic”, except that doing so would have implied something of the reliquary about Slatkin, a notion rebuked by the 80-year-old conductor’s abundant nimbleness of gesture and thought. Elder statesman of the podium he may be, but not an artist to be condescended to as a living museum piece.

In his brief remarks before the start, Slatkin recounted his own family’s stake in the wider cultural history of Southern California, resonances of which were audible in the program’s introductory work, Voyager 130. Composed by Daniel Slatkin, the conductor’s son, it functioned both as its intended programmatic depiction of the work’s namesake vessel and an exploration of the aural shorthand that Hollywood has long ingrained into its global audience as signifying “outer space”. These were threaded together with an excerpt of the Cavatina from Beethoven’s Op.130, a nod not only to the celestial grooves playing into the stars from the Voyager satellite’s Golden Record, but also to the memorable recording of the same quartet made by the composer’s grandparents back on Earth.

Holst’s The Planets proved a fitting bookend to the program. It is, after all, the progenitor of many tropes that the work of Slatkin fils was commentary on. Its inclusion, along with Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending as pivot, also was testament to the abiding love Slatkin père has for English music, an interest that remains disappointingly uncommon from conductors on this side of the Atlantic.

Local history intersected once more in the performance of The Lark Ascending. It commemorated Martin Chalifour’s final concert as the longtime Concertmaster of the Philharmonic. Lithe and unfussy as ever, his silvery violin flickered like the first light of dawn that teases the horizon before unfurling into morning.

Slatkin’s Planets were broadly phrased, but never dragged. Aspiring maestros in the audience would have done well to have taken notes, for Slatkin presented a veritable masterclass. With a seemingly effortless balance of elegance and power, he demonstrated how fresh this much-played music remains, especially in its most famous movements. Under Slatkin’s baton, Mars seethed menacingly, then swelled to its thunderous close, making good on its threats without resorting to cheap loudness for loudness’ sake. In Jupiter, exuberant Philharmonic brass and woodwinds were welted with precision by the strings, who then drew out a richly sung version of the “Thaxted” melody.

Where Slatkin especially impressed was in the final two movements. Unlikely though it may be to some admirers of this classical equivalent of a Top 40 hit, Schoenberg was not far from Holst’s thoughts when he composed The Planets. With forthright delineation of its rhythms and the dislocation they intimate, Slatkin’s interpretation of Uranus drew the thread between London and Vienna closer, not to mention more clearly suggest the violence of a 20th century that was already nascent as Holst penned this music. A “magician” this movement indeed was, albeit one redolent of sulphur, wielding a sword rather than a wand. 

Through the gaseous atmosphere of Neptune, the city on the Danube could be perceived once more, only this time as refracted through Mahler. As few contemporary performances do, Slatkin managed to convey that this music was more than an accumulation of attractive suspended chords and delicate scoring, but something more existential: the contemplation of eternity, not gazing upward towards the cosmos, but below into the void of the cold earth.