Report From The Left Coast

The following from a fine piece for The New Yorker by Alex Ross reporting on the farewell concerts under the baton of departing longtime Los Angeles Philharmonic music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen:

During a seventeen-year tenure, Salonen gave his orchestra a high international profile, refined its sound, added more than two hundred works to its repertory, introduced a cluster of masterpieces (including several major scores of his own), and presided over the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall, maintaining all the while a self-effacing sense of humor. He said goodbye on April 19th, with transfixing performances of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and Symphony of Psalms. If his first day in L.A. was muted, his last was tumultuous. When the final columnar chord faded from the air, the audience began an ovation that went on for fifteen minutes, while members of the orchestra crowded around the conductor to hug him and thank him. The display of emotion was all the more striking because Salonen did nothing to beg for it. Most conductors depart in a blaze of fortissimo glory; this one tried almost to steal away.

RTWT here.