Knussen, L.A. Philharmonic Link Disparate Composers

In our eagerness to unite the globe, we have become diligent seekers of connections between far-flung cultures. Hassidic Jews, for instance, travel to Dharamsala to discuss surprising commonalities at the root of Jewish mystical thought and Tibetan Buddhism with the Dalai Lama. Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist, practically became a mystical hero himself by revealing so many deep-seated similarities between mystical traditions.

And perhaps Campbell, were he still with us, would have been able to put his finger on just why the music of the two most adventurous composers in pre-revolutionary Russia would get along so well with music from modern-day Japan, as it did in a remarkable Los Angeles Philharmonic program at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion over the weekend.

What, we might ask, did either Russia or Japan, with their own musical traditions, want with a big Western orchestra? The answer that seemed to emerge at Saturday night’s performance of works by Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Toru Takemitsu, was that they were attracted to the technology.

Russia and Japan, it so happened, were at war in 1904, when Rimsky wrote his luminous opera “The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh” (its suite ended the Philharmonic program). And while both countries had their own traditions of war, both also were eager to employ the most modern Western war machines they could get their hands on.

Likewise Rimsky and Takemitsu were attracted to the orchestra as a mighty sound machine. But Mussorgsky also had his striking vision of sound, and as an additional cultural wild card, imaginative British conductor Oliver Knussen began the program with Leopold Stokowski’s high-octane Symphonic Synthesis of “Boris Godunov.”

The two Russian works, and the two short pieces for piano and orchestra by Takemitsu that were placed between, had different musical intentions. “Kitezh” is a glowing spiritual hymn to nature (the Russian “Parsifal” is how it was once known), a celebration of Russian folk music and a richly colored score that puts a foot into the waters of modernism (it was a model for early Stravinsky). “Boris” captures the darker side of the Russian mystical and folk culture and their abuse in mysterious St. Petersburg of the Czars; Stokowski’s 1936 vivid Technicolor orchestration updates it to the more modern techniques of power that evoke the age of Stalin.

Takemitsu’s models were not these colorful Russians, or at least he doesn’t mention them in his writings. His interests seemed closer to the French (Debussy and Messiaen) and the American and European experimentalists of the ‘50s and ‘60s with their explorations of pure sound. But like the Russians he came to the Western orchestra as an outsider, attracted to it as a sound machine rather than for its symphonic tradition.

The Takemitsu works on the program came from different periods in the composer’s life (he died last year at age 65). “Asterism,” from 1969, consists of bold bursts of astonishing sound events. Like Stokowskian Mussorgsky, it seems to stop time with the crushing effect of overwhelming sonic incidents.

Takemitsu’s “riverrun,” which was commissioned by the Philharmonic in 1985, has become a modern classic. (John Adams became so obsessed with it a few years ago that he created his own fantasy “Eros Piano” on a small detail from the score.) This is music not of stopping time but of its mysterious flow, time outside of time.

The soloist was Peter Serkin, the pianist for whom “riverrun” was written. His performances of Takemitsu will, I suspect, long be studied for their getting at the heart and soul of very deep and very sensitive music. Here Serkin’s intensity, control, focus and the profound beauty of his tone were riveting.

Knussen, too, took this music very seriously, and his control over the detail of sound and the structure of music was impressive. He is Boulezian in his attention to the orchestra, not a showman for the audience. Yet he enjoys showy music and gets delightfully showy effects when he wants them. The “Boris,” for instance was just as larger-than-life as Stokowski intended it to be, and the Philharmonic was ravishing in it, as it was throughout the evening.