Esa-Pekka Salonen has
had an almost meteoric rise to fame
as a young conductor, taking the reins
at the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the
tender age of thirty four. Despite this
he has always considered himself a composer
first and foremost. In his own understated
words: "I never planned to become
a conductor. I studied conducting a
little bit in order to conduct my own
stuff". After completing his studies
in his native Finland it was to Italy
that he turned, working under the tutelage
of composers Donatoni and Castiglione.
Yet the fact that his conducting career
has somewhat overshadowed his achievements
as a composer thus far is not surprising
when one considers that he made his
debut with the Finnish Radio Symphony
Orchestra at the age of twenty-one.
He was yet further thrust into the limelight
when to great acclaim he stepped in
to conduct a Philharmonia Orchestra
concert in London in 1983. Even more
extraordinary, he had already been conducting
the Los Angeles Philharmonic regularly
for eight years before he took up the
post of Music Director in 1992.
It is only in recent
times that his work as a composer has
increasingly made its mark with works
such as LA Variations and Giro,
both heard at London’s BBC Henry Wood
Proms a few years ago. They demonstrate
a composer with an unerringly impressive
ear for often complex orchestral detail
and timbre.
The lure of composition
finally got the better of Salonen for
in 2000 he took the decision to take
a year off from conducting to concentrate
on writing. All three works on this
disc stem from the years immediately
following this conducting sabbatical.
These years also mark, from the late
1990s onwards, Salonen’s most consistent
and productive period of creativity.
The orchestral works Giro and
Gambit, Five Images after
Sappho for soprano and fourteen
instruments and the cello concerto Mania
all stem from these particularly fertile
years.
Like his compatriot
and close friend Magnus Lindberg, Salonen
does not shy away from orchestral gestures
in a world where some claim the orchestra
to have become an unfashionable and
outdated medium of expression. Lindberg’s
works are architectural constructions
on a huge scale. Salonen however takes
his fascination with machine-like mechanisms
and places them in direct contrast,
even conflict, with a more physical
or human mode of creativity. In part
it is this cross-fertilisation that
gives Foreign Bodies its title.
Salonen explains that on the one hand
he had in mind foreign bodies as a biological
term, in the manner of "bacteria
entering the system". He also considers
himself to be a "foreign body"
having spent so much time away from
his native Finland as a result of his
conducting career. In another sense
he sees the instruments of the orchestra
as a body of sound and an extension
of the human body itself. He talks of
his fascination with the mechanical
and contrasting organic processes involved
in contemporary music. It is the mechanical
elements that come to the fore in Body
Language, the first movement and
the most substantial of the three. The
ferocity of the opening bars makes an
immediate impact, recalling Mossolov’s
Iron Foundry in its massive mechanical
power before the music quickly dissipates
into toccata-like rhythmic patterns.
There are occasional harmonic echoes
of Lindberg but this is Salonen being
very much himself, the physical impact
of his material and bold, often dense
orchestration, immediately engaging
and involving. The central movement,
Language, is a luminous study
in glowing, gently pulsing colours that
gathers intensity and rhythmic energy
before turning in on itself to end quietly,
moving directly into the final movement,
Dance. The initial ostinatos
are the closest Salonen comes to the
influence of minimalism with a hint
of John Adams as the machine grows ever
more powerful, rising to a return to
the opening of the work and a huge Messiaenic
chord in culmination.
Wing on Wing
is Salonen’s most recent large-scale
work, written in 2004 in homage to the
new Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
Angeles and the man who designed it,
architect Frank O. Gehry. Along with
the voices of sopranos Piia Komsi and
Anu Komsi (the latter being the wife
of CBSO conductor and fellow Finn Sakari
Oramo) the sampled voice of Gehry himself
is used by Salonen in a score that contains
some of the most ravishing music that
he has so far produced. Once again the
washes of sound that Salonen creates
bring their own structure to the music,
the cohesion of the sound world perhaps
being even more important than the formal
organisation of the material itself.
The overall effect is magical as well
as beautiful and presumably well suited
to what must be the admirable acoustics
of Gehry’s new hall. Indeed, listening
to the music I found myself hoping that
the opportunity would sometime arise
to hear it in the acoustic clarity of
Birmingham’s Symphony Hall.
Insomnia sits
between Foreign Bodies and Wing
on Wing in chronology and like Foreign
Bodies engages in the same maelstrom
of machine and body. Here the chorale
that underpins the music is subjected
to restless, fleeting interjections
that at their peak become an exhilarating
rush of ideas and imagery. Salonen refers
to the chorale and mechanistic elements
of his material as the "archetypes"
of his music. The physical side of the
material manifests itself in numerous
instrumental solos, many demanding considerable
virtuosity. Once again the work presents
itself as a physically involving experience,
Salonen’s extravagant, even indulgent
orchestration (listen out for the Wagner
tubas) irresistible in its appeal. The
build to the final inexorable climax
is almost worthy of Scriabin’s Poem
of Ecstasy in its impact.
This disc has already
shot to the top of my best releases
of 2005 so far and I suspect will still
be there, or at least very close to
it, come the end of the year. These
are three hugely impressive works, brilliantly
captured in sonically spectacular sound
by the Deutsche Grammophon engineers
and played with sheer brilliance by
the composer and his "home"
orchestra. A triumph all round and highly
recommended.
Christopher Thomas
Anu Komsi; Piia Komsi (sopranos) 
