Philharmonic Pays Tribute to Brahms

It can mostly be taken for granted that lovers of classical music love their Bach and Beethoven. But with the third of the so-called three Bs, you have to ask (to quote the title of Francois Sagan’s ever-so-sophisticated 1959 Parisian novel) “Aimez-vous Brahms?”

Schoenberg, one of the ones who did deeply love Brahms, felt it necessary to defend Brahms as a progressive in an essay.

That question of their loving Brahms is one many concert-goers may well be asking themselves this season, what with Brahms being everywhere commemorated for having died in 1897, a round-numbered 100 years ago. It would have made a good title Friday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s first concert of the Brahms year. The main attraction was Brahms’ First Piano Concerto.

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted; the soloist was his countryman and frequent collaborator, the young Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen. Both are musicians of exceptional technical capacity. Both are composers themselves. And neither is a Brahmsian in any conventional sense.

Mustonen is a fearless virtuoso (his latest recording, for the London label, is a magnificent traversal of Hindemith’s epic series of demanding preludes and fugues, “Ludus Tonalis”). His physical style at the keyboard is odd--his arms make great aerobic swooping motions, allowing for a passing wiping of the brow with his sleeve, before hitting the keys. That should throw everything off, but it doesn’t. He lands precisely. His rhythm is acute; his tone deep and percussive.

The performance overall was slow, determined and in the moment. There were lovely details, details one rarely hears. But sometimes main lines were lost to them. Those long-lined melodic phrases of Brahms, with their heavily upholstered textures and their harmonies oozing expressive dissonances, seemed of little interest to either soloist or conductor. Instead, they seemed to want high modernism from Brahms.

Indeed, their Brahms was more progressive than even Schoenberg’s notion of the composer. Schoenberg didn’t necessarily consider Brahms, or even himself, a modernist in the sense of the clean lines and sharp angles of skyscrapers, or bold dissonances used to startle. Brahms’ progressivism was more muted, even hidden. But Mustonen and Salonen both sounded as if they would much rather have been playing a Bartok concerto.

And it was, in fact, Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, which Salonen used to precede the Brahms concerto, that made the interesting if not always obvious connection between Bartok and Brahms. Though the former seemed ultramodern in his day and the latter was a romantic conservative (compared with his futurist contemporary, Wagner), both Bartok and Brahms were ultimately deep-seated classicists, devoted to Bach and baroque forms.

Salonen has conducted the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta--in which baroque fugal and antiphonal techniques are updated--often and with clear-headed correctness for its neo-classicism, but also with just the right amount of flash to keep it interesting. Sony has just released an admirable recording of it from Salonen and the Philharmonic.

But Friday’s lackluster performance, like the Brahms, felt correct and little more. Perhaps the Philharmonic simply hadn’t gotten back into full stride after the holidays. Or perhaps Salonen’s heart is with neither Bartok nor Brahms at the moment. He is, after all, giving the orchestra a new piece of his own next week, and this might not be the best time to look back.