A Philharmonic Adventure With Knussen

“We will soon see whether we find a new audience or only lose this one.”

The provocative, almost defiant words were spoken by Esa-Pekka Salonen 10 months ago, on the eve of his first adventurous season as music-director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The prognosis thus far isn’t terribly encouraging.

Salonen may be the flavor-of-the-month maestro, and he certainly is as talented as he is photogenic. He puts together demanding programs, and, as a proper child of the late 20th Century, he pays more than lip service to the validity and vitality of contemporary music.

His presence on the Music Center podium, however, has caused no box-office stampedes. The young Finnish firebrand hasn’t enjoyed much of a honeymoon with the conservative Los Angeles public. And if he can’t fill the 3,200 seats of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for a concert that happens to contain some unfamiliar titles, imagine what happens when a less glamorous guest-conductor courts a bit of repertory danger.

One didn’t have to do much imagining on Friday night, when Oliver Knussen, prime minister of British modernism, presided over an evening of local premieres.

It began with a potted excerpt from his one of his own operas. The centerpiece took the spare form of Alexander Goehr’s Piano Concerto, in its first U.S. performance.

Turning from England to America, Knussen presented a pair of thorny little studies by Elliott Carter. Finally, to coat the possibly bitter pill and send everyone home humming, the Londoner from Glasgow offered Aaron Copland’s “Billy the Kid”--all of it.

The program was interesting, to be sure. The soloist for the Goehr was the justifiably vaunted Peter Serkin. Still, the audience was not impressed. The house yawned with empty spaces, with many a mutiny adding to the absentee count during intermission.

Those who stayed mustered only polite applause, at best. The subscribers know what they like and like what they know. They are happiest with meat and taters, Tchaikovsky and Brahms. . . .

Undaunted, Knussen did what he could. He does not cut a particularly prepossessing figure on the podium (or would not, if he chose to use a podium). Since he prefers a dark suit and open sports shirt to the white tie and tails now de rigueur at the Philharmonic, he wins no prize for sartorial conformity, much less splendor. But he is an enlightened musician and a solid, no-nonsense technician.

As an interpreter, he tends toward extremes: loud or soft, fast or slow, with relatively little attention to middle grounds and transitions. Still, he is a conductor who understands the composer’s problems. Analytical sympathy can be very useful when one surveys uncharted territory.

“The Way to Castle Yonder,” which opened the not-so-festive festivities, turned out to be a digest of interludes from Knussen’s “Higglety Pigglety Pop!,” which was staged by the Music Center Opera two years ago. The score--astringent here, lush there--seems awfully serious, even ponderous, for an exercise in storybook whimsy. Still, the craft is imposing.

The Goehr concerto, first performed by Daniel Barenboim under Lawrence Foster in Brighton20 years ago, abounds in delicate instrumental details and in subtle melodic impulses. The piece is nervous and busy, tight and bright. The solo part--sensitively realized by Serkin in his first encounter with the challenge--compresses the cantilena to short-winded essentials.

Goehr cannot be criticized for not having written a neo-Romantic showpiece. His avowed intention was “to create an ‘Italianate’ luminosity,” and he claims that his “conception owes a great deal to classical models.” The problem is a matter of cumulative impact, not of style. There are great trees here, but the forest isn’t much.

In this stylistic context, the Carter miniatures proved uncompromising in their muted intellectual appeal. “A Celebration of Some 100 x 150 Notes” (1987), commissioned by the Houston Symphony, presents 100 measures of genial motivic fanfares to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of Texas. “Remembrance” (1988) chronicles an intricate, elegiac dialogue between trombone and orchestra, for which Ralph Sauer served as poignant soloist.

In “Billy the Kid,” Knussen enforced rigid fervor, and too much speed, where Copland wanted the easygoing sentiment of the Wild West. The accent was wrong, but the Philharmonic played, here as elsewhere, with splashy brilliance.