Esa-Pekka Salonen Conducts Juilliard Orchestra

When Esa-Pekka Salonen was the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New Yorkers heard him in concert mostly when he toured the East Coast with his orchestra. Toward the end of his tenure there, and after he gave up the post in 2009, he turned up more frequently as a guest conductor.

と，Esa-Pekka Salonenは，New York をたびたび訪れていたのですが，もっと作曲に時間を割きたいということで．特に，because he prefers to spend his time composing now (and profitably: he won the $100,000 Grawemeyer Award for his Violin Concerto this year), he seldom visits.作曲で十分な報酬を得られるため，彼は滅多にNew York に現れなくなっていたのですが，そのSalonen がJuilliard Orchestraを指揮して，1時間の無料コンサートをやるというので，長い行列が出来たそうです．

しかし，they are here mainly for pedagogical purposes and only secondarily for the listeners.　だったので，多くは入れなかったようです．

曲は2曲だけで，Sibelius’s “Pohjola’s Daughter” and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphonyだったそうですが，his decision to focus on only two works paid important dividends.
と集中して好演したようです．

Sibelius では，Mr. Salonen’s picturesque, often tumultuous account, with its electrifying accelerandos, carefully sculpted woodwind lines and polished but hefty brass playing, captured the score’s heroic qualities and made its wrenching conclusion palpable. You could almost believe that the Juilliard players had this music in their blood, as Mr. Salonen, who is Finnish, clearly does. And Hirotaka Matsuo, the principal cellist, was particularly striking in the score’s prominent solo passages
と日本人チェリストHirotaka Matsuo の好演を含めて絶賛されています．

Beethoven の交響曲第7番についても，The Beethoven was equally gripping, an essay in opulent string sound, singing woodwinds and punchy, precision brass figures, all molded into a grand, furious explosion of early Romanticism. Mr. Salonen’s dynamic manipulations — shifts from forte to a whispered pianissimo, on repeats, for example — may have seemed momentarily extreme, but they gave the music a clear narrative shape. And you could not have wanted the Presto or the finale to be either speedier or more perfectly balanced, a difficult combination to achieve but one that Mr. Salonen and these players made to seem easy.
と，とにかく素晴らしい演奏会だったようです．

Salonen は日本にも，近年は，キャンセルを含めて，ほとんど来ていませんが，出来れば機会を作ってぜひ来て欲しいモノです．

 

 

Music Review

An Infrequent Visitor With Students in Tow

Esa-Pekka Salonen Conducts Juilliard Orchestra at Tully Hall

Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Juilliard Orchestra Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the ensemble at Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday in a program of Sibelius’s “Pohjola’s Daughter” and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

By ALLAN KOZINN

Published: April 5, 2012

When Esa-Pekka Salonen was the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New Yorkers heard him in concert mostly when he toured the East Coast with his orchestra. Toward the end of his tenure there, and after he gave up the post in 2009, he turned up more frequently as a guest conductor.

But because he prefers to spend his time composing now (and profitably: he won the $100,000 Grawemeyer Award for his Violin Concerto this year), he seldom visits. His only New York appearance this season was on Tuesday evening, when he led the Juilliard Orchestra in an hourlong concert at Alice Tully Hall.

You could hardly complain about the brevity of the performance. For one thing the tickets were free, and a long line of prospective listeners snaked down 65th Street hoping to get a ticket. But though the conductors who work with the Juilliard School’s fine student ensembles often attract big audiences, they are here mainly for pedagogical purposes and only secondarily for the listeners. Judging from the high-energy performances of Sibelius’s “Pohjola’s Daughter” and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony that Mr. Salonen drew from these young players, his decision to focus on only two works paid important dividends.

The Sibelius, a dramatic 1906 tone poem based on a story from the “Kalevala,” Finland’s national epic, is scored in lustrous, if sometimes ominous hues and demands a thoroughly fluid approach to tempo. It describes an episode in the voyage of the sage Vainamoinen, in which he becomes smitten with Pohjola’s daughter but loses her when he fails, despite his own supernatural powers, to accomplish the tasks she sets for him.

Mr. Salonen’s picturesque, often tumultuous account, with its electrifying accelerandos, carefully sculpted woodwind lines and polished but hefty brass playing, captured the score’s heroic qualities and made its wrenching conclusion palpable. You could almost believe that the Juilliard players had this music in their blood, as Mr. Salonen, who is Finnish, clearly does. And Hirotaka Matsuo, the principal cellist, was particularly striking in the score’s prominent solo passages.

The Beethoven was equally gripping, an essay in opulent string sound, singing woodwinds and punchy, precision brass figures, all molded into a grand, furious explosion of early Romanticism. Mr. Salonen’s dynamic manipulations — shifts from forte to a whispered pianissimo, on repeats, for example — may have seemed momentarily extreme, but they gave the music a clear narrative shape. And you could not have wanted the Presto or the finale to be either speedier or more perfectly balanced, a difficult combination to achieve but one that Mr. Salonen and these players made to seem easy.