No sooner had I bid a regretful adieu to Esa-Pekka Salonen, as he departed the Bay Area last June, than he reappeared in my life by way of the New York Philharmonic. And New Yorkers are not the only ones who will benefit from his severance from the San Francisco Symphony. Over the next year or two he will be taking “creative director” jobs in Los Angeles and Paris, along with a host of guest conducting stints that will bring his talents to the world at large. So once again it is San Francisco’s loss and everyone else’s gain.
Of the two concerts he is scheduled to give in New York this fall, I was particularly eager to see the first because it also featured one of my favorite pianists, Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Aimard is a great soloist in part because he is a great team player: both his excellent musicianship and his modest deportment allow him to blend in beautifully with whatever orchestra he is playing with. I last saw him at the Concertgebouw, performing Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Netherlands Radio Orchestra under the skillful conductorship of Karina Canellakis, and it was a delight.
Salonen is one of his longtime collaborators, so I knew this Geffen Hall concert on October 4 was likely to be good, but what I didn’t realize in advance was how intelligently the program would be constructed. Aside from Debussy’s La Mer, everything on the program was new to me, but it was all introduced in a fascinating way.
The first half consisted mainly of three of Pierre Boulez’s Notations, each presented in two forms: as the brief piano solo Boulez had written in 1945 (Notation IV Rhythmique, Notation VII Hieratique, and Notation II Tres vif), followed immediately by the orchestral version that Boulez had elaborated from his initial piano piece in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. For his “intros,” as it were, Aimard was located at the very back of the orchestra, nearly hidden on the lefthand side; but he was as essential to each full rendering as if he were right up front. As if all this weren’t complicated enough, Salonen had separated each Boulez double-play from the next by inserting an appropriately matched Debussy piece: Gigues (from Images for Orchestra) between the first and the second, and Rondes de printemps (from the same piece) between the second and third. This palate-cleansing method was salutary in regard to both composers, for the early twentieth century Debussy pieces gave us a much-needed rest from Boulez’s rigor, while they also revealed how fruitfully Boulez’s sensibility had been influenced by but also departed from the musical inventions of his admired forebear. If I had heard this half of the program described, I would not have been able to imagine how positively enjoyable it would be—and yet it was.
The second half began with Debussy’s Fantasie for Piano and Orchestra, which is downright beautiful and pleasingly various, especially the way Aimard and the New York Philharmonic rendered it. (I have to say, it made La Mer, which followed it, sound boringly mushy by comparison—but then, you may not share my prejudices against that overplayed Debussy work.) For each of the three movements of the Fantasie, Aimard succeeded in making the piano into an orchestral instrument—occasionally blending in completely with the strings, winds, and percussion, but also standing apart from them when enunciating its own unique runs of notes. Here there was no Boulezian hardness to overcome: it was all pure pleasure, and yet it was demanding pleasure, pleasure that asked the audience members to bring something to their listening. If the snippets of Debussy that had adorned the first half were palate cleansers, here we were treated to a whole fantastic dessert. And yet the two men at the center of it all—Salonen on the podium, Aimard at the piano, both briefly hugging each other at the end—could not have been more casual and modest in the way they fielded the audience’s enthusiasm. Even their bows and smiles were a delight to witness, because they made us feel the music had given as much pleasure to them as it had to us.