For Two Weeks, Two Finns Conduct LA Phil in the Two B's
/By Truman C. Wang
2/29/2024
The February 15 LA Phil concert was supposed to have been conducted by Herbert Blomstedt, but the 96-year-old maestro (today’s oldest working conductor) suffered a fall and was replaced by a Finn, Jukka-Pekka Saraste. While wishing maestro Blomstedt a full and speedy recovery, I must say his absence was keenly felt at the concert, for conductor Sarasate’s reading of Schubert was weighty, impetuous and humorless, in a work that is really a sunny Italian-style divertimento in its core and not a full-on sturm und drang Romantic symphony like Beethoven’s Seventh. One missed the al fresco air and sunshine in Mr. Sarasate’s overreaching interpretation. The players, however, seemed to be having a good time in the numerous solo turns and delightful bravura passages. In contrast to the Schubert, the Beethoven Seventh was excellent. It began excitingly starting with the galloping flute, and strong, expressive phrasing. The allegretto held together coherently across the string sections. The third and fourth movements were full of passion and joy. In sum, a big, old-fashioned, Romantic performance. Mr. Saraste received a thunderous ovation at the end. All’s well that ends well.
Photo credit: deutsche gramophone
On February 23, another Finn, Susanna Mälkki, conducted. Mälkki is no stranger to the LA Phil audience, thanks to her many happy returns. Daniil Trifonov, the famed Russian pianist, also made his long-overdue return and the hall was packed on this ‘casual Friday’ evening. Casual might the audience be, but serious was the music-making. The All-Brahms program started with a brilliant reading of the Academic Festival Overture – the strings were rich, the orchestral balance ideal. In the Piano Concerto No. 2 that followed, Trifonov’s playing was at once forceful and poetic. The piano tone was full and beautifully rounded, not clanking as I have heard many a piano in this hall. It was a big, warm, noble interpretation . In agitated passages, Trifonov sounded like a heaven-storming Brahmsian; in quiet passages, he sounded like a poet lost in a world of fantasy and ecstasy. Under the impassioned baton of Mälkki, the LA Phil glowed and blazed with the soloist. In the slow third movement, Robert DeMaine’s solo cello and Trifonov’s piano together sang a duet of great delicacy and tenderness.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.