From London to LA
Tue 30th September 2008, 7:59am
This really is a month of firsts and lasts: I'm onboard the BA flight to Los Angeles after having opened my first season as Principal Conductor of the Philharmonia. Day after tomorrow I'll start rehearsals for the first two weeks of my last season as the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. My ecological footprint will be embarrassingly large this year I'm afraid. Decided to send a cheque to the WWF for the Baltic Sea campaign. From next year, trains and bicycles, I promise myself.
My two weeks with the Philharmonia were incredibly inspiring and exhausting. Inspiring for the amazing artistic capacity and potential the orchestra showed. Exhausting for all the other stuff: interviews, meetings, sponsor events, dinners. Conducting seems sometimes to have the lowest priority in the life of a conductor!
I still have some of those wonderful sounds going through my mind: the raucous urban noise of the Miraculous Mandarin, the heartbreaking farewell of Oedipus Rex, the madness and sheer power of Symphonie Fantastique. To make a list of things that make the Philharmonia one of the great orchestras on the planet would be meaningless, as the deepest and richest musical experiences are usually beyond words and language in general, but I can say this: these musicians never perform without giving everything they got. I cannot remember a concert with them that would have felt like routine. This orchestra doesn't play gigs - they really go for it every time, night after night. How I admire them for this!
The 747 has finally landed, and I'm typing this on my mobile phone as we are waiting for the gate to become free. Tomorrow will be an intense day of studying . I have to learn (and re-learn) a few scores for this autumn. But before that, tonight, I'll see my family again. My son Oliver announced that he will beat me up in our traditional pillow fight, an evening ritual since many years. I don't doubt that. He has devised a very complex system of counting points in the game, and somehow it always turns into a complete victory for him.
From LA to London
Wed 10th September 2008, 10:02am
One of those mornings when you wake up from a coma-like sleep and realize that every muscle in your body hurts. That is what's left of a performance of Mahler VIII after the excitement and applause have died away.
I'm in the middle of my farewell concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, the summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Yesterday was the first of the two concerts, and Thursday's performance will be my last one ever as the Music Director here.
An image that will stay with me for a long time: after the last massive E-flat chord has sounded I can see a couple standing in their box, and shouting "Don't leave!" Beyond what a gesture like that means to me personally, I'd like to see it from a larger perspective: this kind of music, the classical music (what an awful term it is) still has immense power. It is not some marginal relic from another era, but something very much alive – maybe more so than ever!
One of the things that is tough about this profession: when you are deeply immersed in something you have to think about the next thing already. It is like mentally saying goodbye while still living and breathing this week's music. I have to get my head around Oedipus Rex now. Already sent an email to the Chorus Master, Aidan Oliver, about the pronunciation of the Latin text. Opted for post-Cicero style, as Cocteau most certainly falls into that category. Have to think about the entrances and exits of the soloists, and how to position them in the Festival Hall, and communicate these thoughts to the lighting designer, Philip Gladwell. It does not help to be on the other side of the globe.
Sometimes it is good to be insanely busy. I have no time to think about the past or the future. I'm just concentrating on the task in front of me. Leaving the LA Philharmonic after seventeen years and starting a new life with the Philharmonia. What a huge change in my life: daunting but exciting.
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted his final Hollywood Bowl series concert as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra on Thursday 11 September.
Esa-Pekka is a total delight and would make a very good author. His humour is great and all the time you read what he has to say (or hear him talk) there is no doubt that he is a lovely person and will be, and is, a great asset to our gorgeous orchestra.
Flag as inappropriate 25/11/2008 Geraldine
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