The Elbphilharmonie has made a habit of opening its seasons by inviting distinguished guests. This year that hospitality extended to the Orchestre de Paris under Esa-Pekka Salonen, arriving with a program that moved from Strauss’s restless Romanticism through the conductor’s own searching Horn Concerto to Sibelius’s vast, light-filled Fifth Symphony – three vantage points on what an orchestra can be, linked by the instrument Salonen once called his first musical love.
Strauss’s Don Juan ignited the hall in a flash of youthful bravado. Salonen drew a sound at once transparent and muscular, balancing clarity with heat. Strings projected taut energy, woodwinds chattered with quicksilver wit and the horn section dispatched the notorious unison calls with ringing precision. Instead of luxuriating, Salonen traced an arc that made Don Juan’s final collapse feel inevitable, almost tragic – an exuberant spirit meeting its own exhaustion.
The evening’s center of gravity was Salonen’s freshly minted Horn Concerto, commissioned by various cities including Hamburg. Written for Berlin Philharmonic principal Stefan Dohr, the score seeks to uncover the instrument’s inner voice. Its textures are largely reduced, often strings in tremulous support while the solo horn explores its tonal potentials, with a subtle hint at polyphony. Dohr met the challenge with poise, yet the first two movements felt curiously introverted: fragmented, self-absorbed and largely bereft of the long, arching lines that give the horn its embedded sonic character. The finale injected welcome animation – more rhythmic cells, sharper orchestral ripples, playful harmonic detours – yet the overall impression was of three ruminative miniatures loosely stitched together, more like a free fantasia than a concerto in dialogue. Salonen’s intimacy with the instrument was evident, but communicative breadth remained elusive.
After the break, Sibelius’s Symphony no. 5 in E flat major restored grandeur with economy. Salonen illuminated the score’s logic without dulling its mystery. The first movement’s whispering strings suggested the tremor of earth before horns and brass cast shafts of illumination. The rustic variations of the Andante were buoyant, shaped with chamber-like precision. Most gripping was the finale: strings wove the fugato with uncanny attentiveness and shared a single breath, while the horns unfurled the swan theme in bronze-toned majesty. The architecture felt lucid and the intent unmistakable, an interpretation that hints clearly at the creative path leading toward Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony.
Two encores reframed the mood. Ravel’s Le jardin féerique from Ma mère l’Oye floated with silk-spun elegance, each phrase glistening with microscopic detail. Sibelius’s Alla Marcia from the Karelia Suite restored martial lift, sealing the evening with sturdy warmth.
The Elbphilharmonie once again showed its mix of familiar works and new ideas. From the rich layers of Straussian sonic forest to the Spartan open spaces of Sibelius and the more private sound world of Salonen, the program offered very different flavours in one evening. As the hall steps into a new season, that balance of tradition and curiosity points toward journeys still unwritten but already calling.
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