A personal programme from Salonen and the Philadelphia Orchestra

Esa-Pekka Salonen presented a deeply personal programme to launch his two-week residency with the Philadelphia Orchestra. In addition to a piece of his own music, the composer-conductor programmed a work by the late Steven Stucky, whom he championed during his tenure as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. There was also Sibelius, the grandfather of Finland’s musical heritage, whom Salonen understands about as well as anyone on the planet. 

Across three pieces, Salonen drew a compellingly individual sound from the musicians, auguring well for an exciting series of concerts here. It became instantly clear why the musical community of San Francisco has publicly mourned his decision to leave that city’s Symphony at the end of his contract next year.

When Salonen last appeared in Philadelphia five years ago, he leaned into the Orchestra’s own strengths, conducting Strauss with vibrant massed strings and explosive brass chorales. Here, he remade the musicians in his own image. Nowhere was this more evident than in Stucky’s Radical Light (2014), which opened the concert. The rise and fall of the violins was exquisitely controlled, at times producing a high, ethereal sound that almost suggested electronic music. Above this hazy opening, a shimmering, almost-whispered flute solo by Associate Principal Patrick Williams emerged. 

Throughout the piece, the balance often shifted between becalmed strings and zesty passages for woodwind, interrupted intermittently by a brass blast or a beguiling interjection of xylophone or chimes. At nearly 20 minutes, the piece itself outlasted its welcome, but it served to show Salonen’s supreme control of style and dynamics.

Salonen’s own kínēma (2021), scored for solo clarinet and strings, also demonstrated his ability to get exactly what he wanted in terms of sound, although the work itself struck this listener as austere and forbidding. In his mode as a composer, Salonen has resisted calling this work a concerto, with good reason. It lacks much in the way of development or a throughline, and it leaves the audience with little to hold on to.

Each of the piece’s five sections tests the full range of the soloist – in this case, the Orchestra’s own Ricardo Morales – but many moments felt more like exercises than opportunities for musical engagement. Only the third movement, which builds upon the legacy of the Medieval composer Pérotin and the revolutionary polyphony of the Notre Dame school, allowed Morales to indulge the full range of his artistry. The virtuosity of the players under Salonen impressed again – especially for those of us who are accustomed to their warmer, more generous sound week in and week out – but the composition itself was hard to love.

That was absolutely not the case for Sibelius’ Symphony no. 5, which emerged as a study in beauty and grandeur. Philadelphians heard this piece as recently as last year, when Dalia Stasevska led a rendition notable for its wild energy. Salonen instead went for a majestic stateliness. If this interpretation didn’t hold the moment-to-moment excitement of Stasevska’s recent performance, you had to appreciate the astonishing sense of structure that Salonen provided, as well as the sweeping beauty of the work’s central theme. Woodwinds glowed in their transparency, horns were bright and perfectly tuned, the violins were unabashedly Romantic. Although I have not a drop of Finnish blood in my veins, I could innately understand the swell of national pride this music engenders for Salonen and his compatriots.