Bravos, With and Without the Soloist

All the music world, it seems, loves Dawn Upshaw. And there is simply no reason not to succumb to her versatility, her ingenuity, her questing mind, her exquisite tone, her dazzling technique or--best of all--her emotional directness. Everything about her seems genuine. You may have even heard Esa-Pekka Salonen praising the soprano on a radio spot as one of his favorite singers.

Upshaw is guest soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic this week, and she was in particularly good form Thursday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. But put aside consideration of Upshaw for a moment. The Philharmonic is up to something unusual in this program as well. And that is news.

Salonen is back after a nearly two-month absence (he was in Paris conducting Peter Sellars’ transcendent Salzburg production of Ligeti’s “Le Grand Macabre”and recording the opera for Sony), and Thursday night he began what he promises will be an ongoing look at Mexican music. He is doing so, he said at a press conference early in the day Thursday, for the obvious reason that Los Angeles is a Latin city, but even more because the music happens to be so good.

Then he proved it with a startling performance of Silvestre Revueltas’ “La Noche de los Mayas” that left not a few in the audience reeling. Revueltas was a wild child of our century. He was born right on the cusp (Dec. 31, 1899) and seemed an untamed romantic figure straight out of Malcolm Lowry’s “Under the Volcano.” He drank himself into the grave by age 40.

Revueltas had only about 10 good years of composing, but what he wrote increasingly seems to be an important and unique contribution to the century’s art. His 25-minute evocation of the Mayan night, adapted from his score to a forgotten 1939 film of the same title, should be a popular modern classic.

The music, which is fabulously orchestrated and employs a dozen percussionists in a row behind the orchestra, has just about everything. It has a cinematic sweep. It doesn’t quote or mimic folk music but it has its spirit. There are deep guttural sounds that arise from the horns that take us back centuries. There are heartbreaking nostalgic melodies that are also typical of the lush that Revueltas was. And there is ferocity. The final movement is an amazing show for the percussion section.

The performance was monumental. Salonen is known for a certain coolness, and that was fine for bringing out the sheen of instrumental textures and demonstrating just how interesting the rhythms are. Precision does this music no harm. But neither did Salonen throw water on the orchestra’s natural heat; he just made sure that it cooked accurately.

The Revueltas closed the program. Another slighter but very winning Mexican piece, Jose Pablo Moncayo’s “Huapango,” a 1941 Rossinian romp through folk music, opened it. In between came the fascinating contribution of Upshaw, which was not related to the Mexican music but managed to connect in interesting ways anyway.

*

The soprano has revived Lukas Foss’ 1960 “Time Cycle,” settings of texts by Auden, A.E. Housman, Kafka and Nietzsche that deal with the deep meanings of time, of how our inner clocks don’t necessarily mesh with the atomic ones, of how time flies. Foss claimed to overthrow his neo-classical style in this piece for something more avant-garde. But nearly 40 years later, the music sounds more of the past than the future. It is filled with just the kind of poignant despair that is also at the heart of Revueltas’ music and his life.

This score is complicated music. Being about time, it exploits some difficult notions of rhythm and pulse, but the playing was confident. Salonen did not, however, include the optional improvisations Foss suggests between songs, although one suspects there are Philharmonic players who could have handled them.

Upshaw penetrated the heart of the disturbing and revealing texts, and she also was deeply satisfying in two unusual opera arias: Laurie’s Song from Copland’s “The Tender Land” and “No Word From Tom” from Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress.” These touched both the worlds of Foss and Revueltas-- Stravinsky also used an Auden text about time, Copland was friends with the Mexican composer. The audience stood and cheered the Stravinsky, which was free, dramatic and sensationally well sung. There is a chemistry between Salonen and Upshaw. They even look alike, and a bird has whispered that she will be in the opera that Salonen has just announced he will write in two years.

* The Los Angeles Philharmonic repeats this program tonight at 8, and Sunday, 2:30 p.m.; $8-$63; Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., (213) 850-2000.