Ex-pat Salonen back in front of a home orchestra

Esa-Pekka Salonen rounds off the Helsinki Festival and takes the Helsinki Philharmonic to the Proms in London

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By Vesa Sirén
     
      A few days ago Esa-Pekka Salonen was voted Ex-Pat Finn of the Year by Suomi-Seura, the Finland Society. The LA-based conductor and composer is back in the capital putting the Helsinki Philharmonic through its paces for the closing concert of the 2005 Helsinki Festival.
      But what's this? The normal Salonen vim and vigour looks to be in short supply, and the conductor seems more to be listening. Interruptions and instructions are a rare event.
      "Finnish orchestras have moved ahead in leaps and bounds over the last 15 years", says Salonen in a moment away from the podium.
      "These days we can get down straightaway to the polishing up of sound, phrasing, and balance issues. There's never any concern that the musicians won't be able to cope with the technical demands thrown their way."
     
But then the orchestra begins to work on a contemporary piece, and one section has trouble making a particularly awkward passage flow successfully.
      Salonen starts drilling them. And the section leader promises to get the troops in order and sort things out.
     
As has been the way in recent years, Salonen's concert programme is a beefy one.
      For the Helsinki Festival closer, he will be conducting works by four composers: Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel are classics of French Impressionism and Henri Dutilleux and Briton Mark-Anthony Turnage are both successful contemporary composers. The work from the eclectic Turnage is actually a world first performance.
      "Turnage's Trumpet Concerto From the Wreckage was written for soloist Håkan Hardenberger, and it is a very demanding piece. Hardenberger plays three different instruments and the work has a pronounced forward and upward motion. Turnage makes a synthesis, in which the entire history of music is run through a meat-grinder and what comes out the other end is unique Turnage sausagemeat", is how Salonen describes the composition to be premièred.
     
After the Helsinki Festival gig, Salonen is heading off with the Helsinki Philharmonic on a "freezers to the Eskimos" adventure, taking Turnage to the BBC Proms in London. Remarkably enough, it will also be the HPO's début at the Proms.
      "Nah, there's nothing so very strange in that - that a Finnish orchestra gives the first performance of works by a foreign composer", shrugs Salonen.
      "Look at it the other way; some of the best foreign orchestras regularly launch new works by Finnish composers, pieces by Magnus Lindberg or Kaija Saariaho for instance."
     
Salonen's own music, too, is presented by international ensembles.
      Just over a week ago, Valery Gergiyev was at the same Proms festival, giving the first performance of Salonen's overture-like Helix during a tour by the World Orchestra for Peace, the outfit that the late Georg Solti founded in 1995 as "musical ambassadors for peace".
      "Gergiyev did a gergiyeving job on my piece and found a suitable sound for it. He rehearsed and conducted it brilliantly", Salonen enthuses.
     
There's nothing shabby about the World Orchestra for Peace, either.
      It is a 100-strong touring ensemble gathered each year under a Music Director, with the members taken from 40 nations and selected from among the finest musicians around, starting from the leaders of the Vienna Philharmonic. The Helsinki Philharmonic's concertmaster Pekka Kauppinen is also on the roster.
      Esa-Pekka Salonen judges the World Orchestra for Peace to be the cream of the crop among such "best of" compilation ensembles.
     
Is Salonen worried about taking to the Proms not just Marc-Anthony Turnage but major French works, such as Debussy's classic La Mer, which celebrates its centenary this year?
      Apparently not.
      "There is no good reason why a Finnish orchestra abroad should not present something other than Jean Sibelius as its main concert piece, since the musicians are perfectly capable of playing other things. The only change we shall be making to the Helsinki Festival programme for the London trip concerns Henri Dutilleux's Correspondances. It made sense to perform it here as a first airing in Finland, but in London it will be replaced by Sibelius's Luonnotar."
      Dutilleux's cycle of five songs, performed in Helsinki by Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan has a "clarity and longing" that a younger person might - in Salonen's view - have difficulty achieving.
      The work dates from 2002-3, and Dutilleux is still active approaching his 90th birthday. He was born in Angers in January 1916.
     
"I met Dutilleux not long ago in Paris, and I requested a piece from him for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Despite his advanced years, he quite calmly said that he first had to compose something for Seiji Ozawa in Tokyo for the 2006-2007 season, but that after that we might be able to work something out!"
      Dutilleux seems indomitable, but what about Salonen's own condition? The conductor was obliged to cancel some concerts this summer in Finland and also at the Salzburg Festival.
      "I got an inflammation in my neck, a kind of herniated cervical disc, and it was pressing on a nerve. I started to get quite worried that the whole season was going to be wrecked if I didn't get something done about it. Now things are better."
      How did it happen?
      "That's what I was wondering, since I work out regularly and all these years I've been as fit as a fiddle. It may have been a result of composing at the computer keyboard, and twisting myself into some pretty unergonomic positions."
     
Ergonomics will once again be on trial when Salonen gets down to writing a long-promised piano concerto for Yefim Bronfman.
      "The first performance is slated for a concert by the New York Philharmonic in February 2007. The second commissioning party is the BBC Proms."
     
Salonen's long stint as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which is effectively what made him eligible for the ex-pat title, has been extended time and again.
      He joined the LAPO in 1992, after having made his début there as far back as 1984, and now he anticipates he will continue until 2007 or perhaps a year or two after that.
      "I can continue to establish the orchestra in our new Disney Hall, pick the best musicians to replace those who are approaching retirement, and arrange good contracts for them."
      There are also recording sessions in prospect.
      "Yes, the orchestra's old working contract is running out, and the new deal will allow for making records with Deutsche Grammophon. By then I'll have developed the L.A. Phil into the best possible instrument that I've been able to manage over these years, and it will be the turn of someone else to carry on."
     
And what about life after Los Angeles? According to information received by Helsingin Sanomat, Salonen agreed some while back to discuss the vacancy for a chief conductor at the Finnish National Opera.
      The discussions remained just that, and the position went to the young and prodigiously talented Mikko Franck.
      "Yes, it's true I had talks with them, and the house and all the resources are terrific. But my intention is gradually to conduct less and compose more. The job at the National Opera would just have been too massive for that."
     
The ex-pat's next Finnish dimension might possibly be connected with the new Music Centre in downtown Helsinki, scheduled for completion in 2009.
      Could Salonen be tempted into the capital if there just happened to be a chief conductor's position available around the time of the new venue's completion?
      "I really couldn't say anything about that", says Salonen with a neat evasive move.
      "What I could say is that after Los Angeles it is more likely I would not want to take on a music director post, but would prefer to taste a bit of freedom without a title round my neck."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.9.2005


Links:
  Esa-Pekka Salonen (Sony Music)
  Los Angeles Philharmonic, music director Esa-Pekka Salonen
  Finnish Music Information Centre: Esa-Pekka Salonen

VESA SIRÉN / Helsingin Sanomat
vesa.siren@hs.fi