Eschenbach and ‘Red Garuda’ Soar

Whether Christoph Eschenbach will become a music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic or Boston Symphony is a matter of intense speculation within the music world. All three orchestras have openings in 2002 and are known to be considering Eschenbach, which makes his every appearance these days seem almost like an audition.

But right now the place to appreciate the kind of absorbing programming and monumental performances with which Eschenbach might refresh one of the stagnant East Coast orchestras is the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, where he is guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Although Thursday night’s program was devised long before the interest in Eschenbach on the East Coast heated up, it--more than the blandly conventional repertory in his recent tryout with the New York Philharmonic--demonstrated the conductor’s breadth. The majority of the evening may have revolved around standard repertory--Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 19 in F Major and Brahms’ Second Symphony--but it also included a recent and important new American work, Peter Lieberson’s “Red Garuda.”

More than that, it demonstrated that when Eschenbach is at his best, nothing sounds commonplace. That is even more so when he collaborates with equally demanding colleagues, such as Peter Serkin, who was soloist in the Lieberson (which is a piano concerto) and in the Mozart.

“Red Garuda” is the second concerto that Lieberson has written for Serkin--the two are very close friends--and was given its premiere last season by the Boston Symphony, which had also commissioned the First Piano Concerto 18 years ago. “Red Garuda” is, at 24 minutes, quite a bit shorter than the massive first concerto, and, in keeping with Lieberson’s present involvement with Tibetan Buddhism, quite a bit more descriptive. In Eastern myth, the red garuda is a large bird that never stops flying and is meant to illustrate the vast potentials for a life’s journey.

In the concerto, the pianist, literally and musically, signifies this wondrous flight. The keyboard writing is, like the garuda’s soaring, continuous. And, this being a Buddhist concerto, it is never in conflict (or even in dialogue) with the orchestra, which can be said to represent the changing landscapes over which the garuda flies.

Rather, the ringingly sonorous piano part presents the remarkable effect of being excitingly virtuosic yet also sounding serene as it floats above a very active orchestra. Lieberson also entertainingly represents flight by regular alternation between notes in the center of the keyboard and at the outer extremes, requiring the pianist to imitate the motion of flapping wings.

The orchestral writing is colorful and of exceptional beauty. The concerto is in sections meant to depict fire, water, earth and wind; and the elements are captured through delicate woodwind flickers, string washes and an ever-changing heartbeat pulse that ranges from a delicate fluttering to a delicious, deliberate plotz of brass and percussion. Though ever serious, spiritual and modernist, Lieberson is also a closet eclectic. And it is a unique quality of his music that traces of Broadway dance music in the last section of earth and wind can contribute to the work’s ineffable feeling of mysticism and satisfaction.

The performance was superb from orchestra and centered soloist, and that was mirrored in the Mozart concerto that followed. Eschenbach and Serkin are musicians devoted to great clarity of articulation and rhythmic precision. Both focus sound into the tight and burning energy that feels as though it burns a hole into the music through which a listener might enter.

Brahms’ Second Symphony was also treated to such an approach. Eschenbach made an occasion of it, often with tempos that could have seemed controversially slow if it were not for the sheer intensity of sound he produced. The Philharmonic cello section, starting to find a new voice under the new principal, Andrew Shulman, was particularly impressive in this regard, especially in its rapt yet lucent playing at the opening of the Adagio that practically seemed to stop time.

However broad Eschenbach’s Brahms might be, it was also dynamic. Inner voices were carefully prepared, and textures in a composer sometimes thought to be a muddy orchestrator were ever intriguing and rhythmically vital.

If there could be any complaint, it might be the sheer magnitude Eschenbach brought to the symphony. Eschenbach’s approach to Brahms is a very modern one that finds in the composer precedents for the kind of brilliant symphonic expression that Mahler, Strauss and Schoenberg would go on to develop. Brahms does not usually sound this way, but just such an unconventionally historical imagination as Eshenbach’s reminds us why we still need this music.

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The Los Angeles Philharmonic repeats its program with Christoph Eschenbach and Peter Serkin tonight at 8 and Sunday at 2:30 p.m., $10-$70, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. (323) 850-2000.