kinēma: Esa-Pekka Salonen & Anthony McGill at NYPhil

Esa-Pekka Salonen returned to lead the New York Philharmonic with a program inspired by the conductor’s experiences during Covid-19 lockdowns. The concert began with a Matryoshka-like transcription of a transcription in “Four Original Versions of Ritirata nocturne di Madrid by L[uigi] Boccherini, Superimposed and Transcribed for Orchestra.” Yes, that’s the actual title as listed in the Philharmonic’s program.

Boccherini composed the original as part of a string quintet, depicting the nocturnal sounds of Madrid (church bells, folks partying too hard, a marching band announcing the city’s curfew in counterintuitive fashion). It became so popular that he rearranged it several times over; Berio later combined several of these into one large orchestra piece. It’s safe to claim both versions as transcriptions because Boccherini writes “everything here that does not comply with the rules of composition should be pardoned for its attempt at an accurate representation of reality,” although Berio doesn’t state include that in his title (probably for the best). The performance was engaging, creating imagery brash and delicate, and featured two snare dreams on either side of the stage, trading rolls and passage to distinctive effect.

The origin of Salonen’s kinēma, for clarinet solo and string orchestra, is a little less complicated. After writing last week about the precarious task of conductors speaking from the stage, I was happy to hear Salonen explain the work’s beginning: much of the musical material came from the cutting room floor after composing the score to a particularly salacious movie. Due to the silence and relative seclusion of the Finnish Gulf where stayed for large periods, the composer-conductor become attuned to a different level of volume and pitch, specifically soft sounds and the low end of the pitch spectrum. The clarinet, known for its ability to start notes from near silence in its lower range, is the perfect instrument to highlight these musical ideas. 

Anthony McGill’s direct style and exquisite dynamic range was a treat—the Philharmonic is wise to feature this star principal player (he played not one but three clarinets in Anthony Davis’s You Have the Right to Remain Silent last season at Alice Tully Hall) as much as possible. His tone was hollow and dreamy in Dawn, the piece’s first movement, described by Salonen as a “musical harmonic cloud” with the “same information but infinite variations.” Medieval composer Perotin’s polyphony was the third movement’s purported inspiration. I couldn’t hear any musical reference to the titular musician in Perotin Dreams, but enjoyed the plucky dance rhythms reminiscent of Stravinsky’s Petrushka, with much due to McGill’s playful and quirky performance. After the fourth movement’s Elegy, the clarinet took a break while the strings played variations of the Dawn material, jumping back in to scream in upper range through the piece’s final moments.

Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is standard concert for the Philharmonic audience, but Salonen provided unique perspective to the piece, declaring that an orchestral performance was likely the loudest noise an audience could perceive in the early 1800s—seemingly true, a spectacle gradually magnified throughout the years until the prevalence of machinery and electronics replaced the symphony as Decibel Royalty.

With double winds, no low brass, and minimal percussion, the piece wasn’t even the loudest music on this program—nonetheless, it confidently owns the subtitle (bestowed by Wagner) “apotheosis of dance.” Salonen delivered large cues with a full turn to the applicable section, usually first violins, forsaking the rest of the orchestra and sometimes even dropping both hands. His baton is a fluid lever, the wrist a fulcrum tilting the baton’s plane for mood and emphasis. An entrance on beat one might be summoned by a high arc on with the right hand, baton straight up in the air, like a flourish before the bow that invites Frau Baroness or Margravine to waltz.

Each thematic repetition of the second movement gained weight and volume in a stately build, but tempo changes between themes were over-exaggerated and ill-fitting to movement three’s overall flow. Salonen barely paused before the finale, racing the orchestra to a bubbling, bravado finish.