For the second week in a row at the Philadelphia Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen juxtaposed a work of his own with a piece written by a beloved collaborator gone too soon. This time it was Kaija Saariaho, his Finnish compatriot who died last June of glioblastoma. Saariaho and Salonen established their relationship at Helsinki’s Sibelius Conservatory in the 1970s and remained close, both professionally and personally, for the rest of her life. In remarks before Friday afternoon’s concert, he described her as “a source of inspiration in my life”.
Salonen compared Saariaho’s musical sound world to a garden in which the listener can simply exist. That seemed an apt way to consider Lumière et pesanteur, a short symphonic poem inspired by her larger oratorio La Passion de Simone. Saariaho’s ideas don’t always develop in expected ways; at times, they barely pulsate. This six-minute work takes as its main directive the creation of a sense of beauty and repose. Salonen set the right tone from the start, layering perfumed woodwinds above a mass of glittering strings, punctuated occasionally by a subtly struck gong or the bell-like chirp of celesta. Jazzy brass interjections – especially from the trumpet – complemented the architecture rather than overwhelming it. Salonen crafted a masterfully hazy mood that could have happily continued even longer.
In contrast, the conductor-composer’s own Sinfonia concertante emerged with a riot of color, tone and ideas. Salonen resisted calling the work a concerto, yet it was clear from the forceful playing of guest organist Olivier Latry that the king of instruments was driving the bus. In the first movement, Pavane and Drones, Latry’s organ traded figures with multiple orchestral players and sections, gradually picking up the dance-like theme with great vigor, then blasting above the massed ensemble at forte as the section came to a meaty close. The title suggests something mechanical, and Salonen injected a sense of electronica in the buzzy strings and the solo lines for the organ, which at times sounded like a theremin in a B-movie.
The central movement, Variations and Dirge, featured notably an unaccompanied threnody for Salonen’s mother, who died during its composition. Ghost Montage, the final section, was inspired by a boisterous organ heard at an ice hockey game – Latry managed to mirror the jovial and jerky style of the rink, before joining the whole orchestra for a ravishing riff on Pérotin’s Viderunt omnes. As with Salonen’s kínēma, heard last week, the total score is a touch overlong and a tad overstuffed, but the sheer ebullience of the playing kept the listener fully engaged through its peaks and valleys.
A rare complete performance of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé ballet score finished the afternoon. Some conductors prefer to luxuriate in the music’s misty beauty – perhaps recognizing that the lack of a dance component leaves the project at a deficit. Salonen certainly realized moments of pure hedonistic pleasure, especially when he directed the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir in passages of wordless chanting that ravished the ear. But he didn’t skirt drama either: the Danse grotesque was shocking in its brutality, the Danse guerrière crystal-clear in its evocation of Chloé’s horrific captivity. The work makes many solo demands, all of which were handled superbly, although Associate Concertmaster Juliette Kang merits special mention for ethereal contributions. Some kitsch cannot be avoided – the various percussion elements, especially the wind machines, grow maddeningly silly after a while – but Salonen deserves credit for a stunningly sculpted interpretation that put the music at the center of the action.
