At a time when an HD camera can be had for less than $200, it’s perplexing that DVDs are still being produced with subpar visual clarity. Fortunately for the Medici Arts’ Salonen: L.A. Variations, Sibelius: Symphony No. 5, the sparkling content more than compensates for flat, slightly bluish-tinted video that makes conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen look as if he’s just come from a chemical peel.
The Finnish composer-conductor’s “L.A. Variations” has become a regular fixture in concert halls, and the young talents of the Verbier Festival Orchestra bring an impressive vigor to maneuver through a decidedly demanding score, with its on-a-dime rhythmic vectors and dense chord structures.
What makes this production worthwhile as a DVD is Salonen’s remarkable interaction with his musicians. The 51-year-old is clearly relaxing from his stint in Switzerland: At the conclusion of a stratospherically high double-bass solo, Salonen and his principal hazard a smile, and he’s seen grinning through the entirety of an especially gnarly contrabassoon solo.
Passages of “L.A. Variations” wouldn’t be out of place in a Hitchcock nightmare or getaway scene, but it’s thankfully never in danger of sounding like Hollywood-soundtrack pastiche. Fellow Finn Jean Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony makes the perfect complement: Both men explore a sonic landscape of blurred edges and giant, cascading washes of sound. The closing measures of the Fifth’s “Finale” can often sound abrupt—arresting, unison chords followed by caverns of silence—but Salonen imbues his countryman’s off-beat ending with pace and potency. This is required viewing, even if the title-screen font looks as if it was lifted from a Nintendo cartridge.
- Doyle Armbrust
published in Time Out Chicago on August 18th, 2009