The LA Phil began its fourth season at Disney Hall with the piece
that started Salonen's career back in the day when he had to pinch
conduct on short notice for Michael Tilson Thomas.  This is the Mahler
3rd and was there ever a lot of it.  There were also new faces on stage
with every French horn in the city working, Ariana Ghez the young new
principal oboist, timpanist Rainer Carroll taking over for the retired
Mitchell Peters, and the puzzling absence of Janet Ferguson from the
roster of flutes.  And it didn't seem anywhere near ninety minutes long
thanks to exceptionally well balanced and nuanced playing from all
involved.  The Phil's French horn section can occasionally slip as it
did last year in a jarring Beethoven's Sixth but the augmented contingent
was on its game.  Trumpets onstage and off as were up to their usual
caliber and trombonist James Miller got perhaps the loudest ovation of
the evening during the curtain calls.  Nothing could follow something
of this magnitude, whether well-played or not.  Nothing was programmed
before it or after it.

Salonen and Borda did the preconcert Q&A.  Although his spoken English
is still a little choppy, Salonen gave quite an erudite and often witty
account of the piece as he saw it as a youngster, having to learn it in
five days, and as he sees it today.  And in an unusual turn for these
kinds of talks, he said it was in many ways an imperfect piece but in
every way a vision of Mahler's perfect world.  His claims for the
orchestra playing the dynamic range of the hall to the hilt were on
the mark.  Acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota correctly predicted well before
the inaugural season that the musicians of that caliber would adjust
to the hall in the fullness of time and adapt their sound to it.

The season is off to a good start.

Ravi Narasimhan
Redondo Beach, CA