A recent NYTimes report about Salonen stepping down as conductor of the
San Francisco Symphony, brought me back to his own music. I am familiar
with the LA Variations (a nineties work), his violin concerto 2007),
which he wrote in collaboration with Leila Josefowitz, and this weekend
I listened to the cello concerto which he wrote with Yo Yo Ma in mind,
and which was premiered in Chicago in 2017.
These works are usually commissioned by multiple orchestras, in this
case, Chicago, New York and Hamburg. It was however recorded by Ma and
the LA Philharmonic, Salonen's orchestra at the time.
I enclose two links: the first is to the official recording in LA, the
first movement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9Mm-XeEmYI
the other movements are available too, online.
The other link is to the entire concerto, in a live performance by
Nicolas Alstaedt and the SWR orchestra, conducted by a bespectacled
Christoph Eschenbach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ApmRQHe2Q&t=176s
My impression is the concerto has the usual characteristics of
conductor's music: it's very busy, and all musicians are much engaged. Occasionally there is the sense the listener is drowning in a sonic
soup. My guess is people felt the same way about Mahler, when his music
was new. However, there are more open moments, too. I think the first
movement of this concerto is very good; the other two movements are less striking.
I'm wondering how you fee about this music...
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