The L.A. Philharmonic’s leadership models

Ninety-one years old and an orchestra that prides itself as progressive, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has, this weekend, begun its second season under Gustavo Dudamel, the orchestra’s 11th music director. You may recall that last season we took a few knocks. Critics around the country still seem to consider Southern California as the orchestral Wild West — thrill-seeking but not yet quite civilized. In these here Hollywood-addled provinces, to paraphrase the Philadelphia Inquirer, curly locks can be mistaken for culture.

But the last four (straight- or wavy-haired) music directors of the last half century — Zubin Mehta, Carlo Maria Giulini, André Previn and Esa-Pekka Salonen — are the ones who molded the modern L.A. Philharmonic. And they are not without a certain renown — or continuing interest — on the international music scene. In fact, these maestros happen to be featured on a rash of new CD and DVD releases, as well as in documentaries and books. While Giulini died five years ago and Previn has not returned for two decades, Mehta and Salonen still maintain houses in Brentwood and a close relationship with their old band (Salonen is conductor laureate and Mehta a regular guest in Walt Disney Concert Hall).

Zubin Mehta

Mehta appears with the Vienna Philharmonic in two prestigious new CD collections. One is a three-disc compilation of live performances of Haydn symphonies taken from radio broadcasts that the orchestra has released itself. The other is a massive 25-CD collection on Deutsche Grammophon of live recordings from the Salzburg Festival. Coincidentally, all the Mehta/Vienna performances are from 1972, when Mehta was at the height of his L.A. tenure (1962-78).

In such classically restrained works as Haydn’s Symphony No. 22 (“The Philosopher) and Schubert’s Third Symphony, Mehta drove the Viennese rather hard. But the Schubert symphony was followed in Salzburg by a terrific performance of Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben,” marked by seductive excesses of sugar, cream and energy.

Much of Mehta’s time in recent years has been spent in the opera house, and he is the conductor of the latest and visually most spectacular “Ring” cycle yet to come out on video (Unitel Classics). Filmed in the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia — the striking new opera house in Valencia, Spain, designed by Santiago Calatrava — this is the fabled, futuristic production from last year by the Spanish team La Fura dels Baus, with radical sets, acrobatic feats of daring and philosophical conundrums about man and machine. The singing is generally likeable, and Mehta makes complex stage business and complex music feel purposefully integrated. The Blu-ray version is a knockout.

But Mehta also pulls it off on low-def, which is the only way we can thus far see the “Mantua Rigoletto.” This multimedia event for Italian TV last month — a live performance of Verdi’s opera in various locations in the Italian city, starring Plácido Domingo singing the baritone title role for the first time and Mehta conducting — was televised live throughout Europe. It is promised for PBS one of these days and also DVD release. Until then, try YouTube.

Carlo Maria Giulini

After 14 seasons in L.A., Mehta walked into the office of Ernest Fleischmann, then general manager of the orchestra, and gave him the astounding news that he had accepted an offer from the New York Philharmonic. That scene is recounted by Fleischmann, who died in June, in Thomas D. Saler’s “Serving Genius,” a new biography of Carlo Maria Giulini. What followed was perhaps the greatest example of orchestral salesmanship in modern history, and Saler offers a fascinating full account of the saintly 65-year-old Italian conductor’s unlikely path to his house in the Hollywood Hills.

His was a short (1978-84) but happy tenure and one that changed the character of the orchestra. Fortunately, Giulini’s Old World luster was captured on a series of L.A. recordings that Deutsche Grammophon has collected for the first time in a six-CD box, “Giulini in America.”

The Giulini sound — rich, full, dark, intense (think espresso, chianti, Signora Giulini’s to-die-for tomato sauce) — is unique. At his first rehearsal for the Beethoven Ninth, Saler reports, Giulini asked the players to “start from the silence of the hall,” and that quality of music coming from a deep, mystical place can be felt here in symphonies by Beethoven (Nos. 3, 5 and 6), Brahms (Nos. 1 and 2), Schumann (No. 3) and Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” (No. 6), along with a scattering of Debussy and Ravel.

André Previn

What went wrong with André Previn, who succeeded Giulini, is still not entirely clear. His short music directorship (1985-89) ended abruptly when he resigned, hounded from his post, he claimed, by Fleischmann’s machinations.

A few new clues can be read between the lines in three unrelated documentaries that have coincidentally come out DVD. Tony Palmer’s “The Kindness of Strangers” (Voiceprint Records) was made around the opening of Previn’s first opera, “Streetcar Named Desire,” in San Francisco in 1997 but fills in details of his life, five wives, film career, jazz career, etc.

A more recent documentary, “André Previn: A Bridge Between Two Worlds” (Unitel Classics), consists of Previn in conversation with two of his ex-wives (actress Mia Farrow and violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter), with two of his children, with soprano Renée Fleming, jazz pianist Oscar Peterson and playwright Tom Stoppard.

There are some very funny moments here, particularly from Farrow, who laughs over her ex, who “smokes a little weed with jazz musicians” one minute “and then you’re Sir André” the next. When the subject of Previn’s four Oscars comes up, he admits that he has only one. Farrow asks which wife has them. “I thought it was you,” he answers.

The most telling exchange is between Previn and his son Lukas, a rock musician with heavily tattooed arms and a lip piercing. Father and son show great affection for each other and mutual musical respect, but that wasn’t always so. Lukas recalls how as a teenager he was forbidden to listen to pop music and how he would sneak into the bathroom with samizdat cassettes of Pink Floyd. Previn admits he acted foolishly, explaining that he didn’t then understand the music and so became defensive.

Lukas was a small child during Previn’s L.A. Phil tenure, and that same defensiveness about popular music, about his former jazz and film career, his carelessness about his Oscars, were part of what alienated him from his hometown band. But what really was his hometown? He was born in Berlin, grew up in L.A. (where he became a celebrity film conductor and jazz pianist), yet he claims to feel most at home in London or maybe New York.

“I’m too American to think I’m anything else,” Previn says at one point. Even so , the generous bonus to “A Bridge Between Two Worlds” of ravishing performances of Previn as pianist in Mozart’s piano quartets with members of the Vienna Philharmonic couldn’t be more European.

If Previn wasn’t completely at home with the L.A. Phil, maybe his other post — with the Royal Philharmonic in London — had something to do with that. “Baton, Bows and Bruises” (RPO), a documentary about the Royal Philharmonic put out by the orchestra, pays surprisingly little attention to Previn (who was its music director 1985-88 and principal conductor 1988-92). The demands of two orchestras, this history suggests, was simply too exhausting for him.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

Some reasons why Salonen did click with L.A. in his 17 seasons here (1992-2009), and how he made the orchestra the leader it is today, are eloquently spelled out in music critic Alex Ross’ new book, “Listen to This,” which reprints his New Yorker profile of Salonen. For a final bit of evidence, we have Salonen’s last recording as music director, a live performance of the world premiere of Arvo Pärt’s Symphony No. 4 (“Los Angeles”) in January 2009.

This was initially released as a sonically compressed download on iTunes, but ECM has finally brought out the physical disc in classy packaging and in startlingly good sound. The strings have a heavenly gloss and a bass drum might be coming from the floor under your feet. This 35-minute symphony is a work of wonder, and Salonen’s radiant performance makes deep awe and surface beauty non-contradictory.

Three months later in London, and just before returning to L.A. to lead his final concerts as music director, Salonen performed Mahler’s Ninth Symphony with the Philharmonia Orchestra, of which he had just become principal conductor and artistic director. This is an edgy, agitated, searing reading. Perhaps it reflects Salonen’s state of mind as he was madly finishing his Violin Concerto for its L.A. premiere and preparing for his emotional farewell concerts here the following month.

The L.A. Phil’s next Mahler Ninth will be conducted by Dudamel in January. And it will be framed by Salonen’s return as conductor laureate in November and Mehta’s appearance in Disney with the Israel Philharmonic in March. Maybe Mehta will pop in to hear Dudamel rehearse Bruckner’s Eighth with the L.A. Philharmonic that morning. The symphony is a Mehta specialty, the specialty of a conductor who became the orchestra’s music director nearly a half-century earlier. If that’s not tradition, I don’t know what is.

mark.swed@latimes.com