Proms: Easy on the Earbox

LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC ROYAL ALBERT HALL

NICOLAS SLONIMSKY, writer and lexicographer, was born in Russia in 1894 and died three years ago in California, much loved by musicians around the globe. Slonimsky was one of a kind. His maverick curiosity led him to perform Ives and Varese when no other conductor was looking at their works. He compiled Baker's Dictionary of Music and Musicians and A Lexicon of Musical Invective - a collection of gloriously wrong reviews by fat-headed critics. And in 1947 he assembled a compendious Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns which has fascinated jazz musicians and classical composers ever since.

John Adams's Slonimsky's Earbox, based on the Thesaurus and given its London premiere by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Tuesday's Prom, is an orchestral toccata whose warm harmonies and insistent rhythms mirror its inspirer's bubbling good humour. Slonimsky's Earbox is written for a large orchestra - indeed, like several of Adams's works, it might not escape the charge of occasional over-scoring - and shows the kind of symphonic sweep that his music increasingly displays.

Some younger composers, having played around with music as sound, are rediscovering the structural power of harmony; Adams's sense of musical purpose woke up early, and in Slonimsky's Earbox he demonstrates how fruitfully it can be allied to a feeling of sheer fun.

In Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Salonen was joined by the American soprano Lorraine Hunt, whose physical involvement with Mahler's folk texts suggested an instinct for the stage - she lived the words, her expressions and gestures pointing up the meaning of the poet's disillusionment with nature.

It is rare these days to hear any of Sibelius's numerous tone-poems in the concert hall; the chance to listen to all four of his Lemminkainen Legends of 1895 - nearly 50 minutes of music - comes almost never. Salonen underlined the basic unity of Sibelius's conception, reinforced by touches of the scoring - a fondness for solo cello, for example. Salonen's fast tempi in the closing Return of Lemminkainen could be forgiven after the three predominantly slow movements which preceded it, and his attention to detail produced extraordinary clarity in the orchestral playing. But one missed the larger phrase: if any composer wrote in wide, sweeping lines, it was Sibelius, and some of his natural grandeur was sacrificed. Yet this was a rare musical treat, an adventurous piece of programming which more conductors ought to be encouraged to attempt.

Martin Anderson