PROGRAM NOTES by Phillip Huscher Esa-Pekka Salonen Born June 30, 1958, Helsinki, Finland. Currently resides in Los Angeles, California. LA Variations Esa-Pekka Salonen composed his LA Variations in 1996, on a commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which gave the first performance on Januar y 16, 1997, conducted by the composer. The score calls for two flutes, piccolo and alto flute, two oboes and english horn, three clarinets, E -flat clarinet, bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, bass drum, vibraphone, tuned gongs, log drums, bongos, marimba, tubular bells, crotales, tom-toms, tam-tams, congas, glockenspiel, roto -toms, mark tree, harp, celesta, synthesizer, and strings. Performance time is approxi mately nineteen minutes. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first s ubscription concert performance of Salonen’s LA Variations was January 12, 2006 . The Orchestra first performed this work at the Ravinia Festival on June 30, 2002, with Christoph Eschenbach conducting. Esa-Pekka Salonen originally considered himself a composer who also conducted. But after leading an acclaimed performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony on short notice in London in 1983, he quickly became an internationally known conductor for who m composing was a sideline . Nearly a decade passed before Salonen found the time to complete another major work. It was with the successful premiere of these LA Variations in 1997, written to showcase the Los Angeles Philharmonic, of which he is music dire ctor, that Salonen at last entered a new and highly productive phase in his composing career. Since then he has produced nearly one large -scale work each year, including Insomnia, which he led here in its American premiere with the Chicago Symphony in 2003. Composers who are also fine conductors are not uncommon. There are many notable examples, from Richard Strauss, who led the Chicago Symphony in 190 4, to John Adams, who conducted the Orchestra in 1999 in two weeks of programs that included his Naive and Sentimental Music, which will be performed here again next week—this time under Salonen’s baton . On the other hand, established conductors sometimes write music on the side. Michael Tilson Thomas, who leads the CSO in March, recently premiered his cycle of Emily Dickinson settings with the San Francisco Symphony. Lorin Maazel’s opera, 1984, was staged at Covent Garden just last year. (For sheer productivity, no one can match the Finnish conductor Leif Segerstam—he appeared with the CSO in the late 1990s —who has written more than one hundred and twenty symphonies in his off -podium hours.) And the legendary Wilhelm Furtwängler persisted in thinking of himself as a composer who conducted, even though the music public always saw it the other way around. But th e list of those who have excelled in both endeavors—and who have enjoyed significant careers doing both —is short. In that regard, Salonen enjoys very distinguished company, including Gustav Mahler, Leonard Bernstein, and Pierre Boulez. When Salonen entere d the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki in the 1970s, it was to study horn and composition. He enrolled in Jorma Panula’s conducting class simply because he felt that young composers should learn to lead their own works. Composing remained Salonen’s focus : in H elsinki he studied with the visionary Einojuhani Rautavaara , and in the early 1980s he worked with Niccolò Castiglioni in Milan and in the Finnish Broadcasting Company studios . His earliest large -scale orchestral works date from this time—as does Floof, a song cycle for soprano and small ensemble, which was the first of Salonen’s compositions performed here in Symphony Center, on a MusicNOW concert in 200 1.) Following his “breakthrough” as a conductor, Salonen began appearing with orchestras on a regular ba sis, eventually becoming music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1992. Salonen continues to negotiate balancing the two sides of his musical life. He even took a year’s sabbatical from conducting in 2000 in order to devote himself full-time to writing music. As he recently said, Composing is as important to me now as it was twenty years ago, and I still think—as I did then—that it’s impossible to work on both sides simultaneously. There will have to be times when I’m not conducting because I’m composing. I haven’t solved that problem, and perhaps I never will. In the meantime, Salonen continues to enjoy unusual success leading a divided life. The Chicago Symphony’s concerts this week and next—one featuring Salonen the composer, the other Salonen the conductor—look at both sides of this musician’s distinctive profile. Esa-Pekka Salonen on LA Variations LA Variations is essentially variations on two chords, each consisting of six notes. Together they cover all twelve notes of a chromatic scale. Therefore the basic material of LA Variations has an ambiguous character: sometimes (most of the time, actually) it is modal (hexatonic), sometimes chromatic, when the two hexachords are used together as a twelve-tone structure. This ambiguity, combining serial and nonserial thinking, is characteristic of my work since the mid- eighties, but LA Variations tilts the balance drastically towards the nonserial. This piece, some nineteen minutes of music scored for a large orchestra, including a contrabass clarinet and a synthesizer, is very clear in its form and direct in its expression. The two hexachords are introduced in the opening measures of the piece together in the chromatic phenotype. Alto flute, english horn, bass clarinet, and two bassoons, shadowed by three solo violas, play a melody which sounds like a kind of synthetic folk music, but in fact is a horizontal representation of the two hexachords transposed to the same pitch. Some of the variations that follow are based on this melody; others are the deeper, invisible (or inaudible) aspects of the material. There are also elements that never change, like the dactyl rhythm first heard on the timpani and percussion halfway through the piece. This is a short description of the geography of LA Variations: 1) The two hexachords together as an ascending scale. Movement slows down to 2) Quasi–folk music episode (which I described before). 3) First Chorale (winds only) 4) Big Chord I. The two hexachords are interpreted three times in three different ways in a very large chord. 5) Scherzando, leggiero. 6) A machine that prepares the even sixteenth-note movement of 7) Variation of the melody in trumpets and first violins. 8) Fastest section of the piece [quarter note = 150]. First woodwinds in the highest register, then bass instruments in the lowest register. An acrobatic double bass solo leads to 9) Variation for winds, percussion, harp, celesta. 10) Canon in three different tempos. Scored for chamber ensemble. 11) A tutti string passage leads to Big Machine I. Percussion prepares the mantra rhythm: [eighth note, two sixteenth notes, eighth rest, eighth note, two sixteenth notes, eighth rest] 12) Second Chorale. 13) A new aspect of the melody in unison strings. 14) Tempo [quarter note = 125]. Canon à 3. 15) Big Machine II. Probably the most joyful music I’ve ever written. 16) Big Chord II. This time two different interpretations of the hexachords. Repeated mantra rhythm in timpani, roto-toms, and log drums grows to maximum power. 17) Coda. Two hexachords together as in the beginning. Scored for eight muted cellos, eight muted violins, and piccolo. Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. © Chicago Symphony Orchestra. All rights reserved. Program notes may be reproduced only in their entirety and with express written permission from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. These notes appear in galley files and may contain typographical or other errors. Programs subject to change without notice. .