Call it a good-news-bad-news scenario, with an extra blast of good news attached. When the CAMA concert season was announced about a year ago, there was much excitement among those of us who crave contemporary and/or modern (as in the past century) repertoire, learning that the annual Los Angeles Philharmonic program would include music of the famed late French composer/conductor Pierre Boulez. This is the 100th birthday year of the composer (1925-2016), and it would have been a timely local occasion.
Alas, it is not to be. Although the previously promised Boulez and Debussy program, with L.A. Phil emeritus maestro Esa-Pekka Salonen and noted pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard (a Boulez specialist, by the way, among other strong points), will be performed in L.A.’s Disney Hall on Thursday and over the weekend, their Friday, May 9, night visit to the Granada arrives Boulez-less. Instead, Friday’s concert now features Debussy with Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 — a strong package in its own right.
The program shift came from the L.A. Phil, who reportedly were concerned about the stage not being ample enough to suit this special dance-enhanced concert — despite CAMA’s countering that the problem could be resolved with the Granada’s stage extensions. But a perhaps paranoid interpretation of the switch supports the idea that Boulez’s famously sophisticated mode of serial music — not a crowd-pleasing body of work, generally — has faced a veritable moratorium in Santa Barbara. The closest he has come is the worldly 805 outpost of the Ojai Music Festival, where he has been much celebrated and hosted as a memorable artistic director on a few occasions.
But on the good news side of the equation, the chance to hear the luminous L.A. Phil at the Granada, with Salonen on the podium, is one to cherish. The L.A. Phil has been gracing local stages under CAMA’s aegis for more than a century, dating back to the beginning of CAMA’s creation in 1919.
The Finnish Salonen came of age on the global stage during his 18-year tenure leading the L.A. Phil, during which time he also ushered the orchestra into the upper ranks of orchestral culture on an international scale, while fighting the good fight and championing new music. For CAMA concerts at the Granada over the years, he has appeared a total of 16 times as head of the L.A. Phil and three times as head of the London Philharmonia Orchestra.
In recent Salonen news, he headed up the San Francisco Symphony from 2020 until just last year, when the orchestra’s cutbacks on his ambitious contemporary music agenda led him to end his association as music director. Salonen was also recently announced as the music director of the 2026 Ojai Music Festival, a role he fulfilled with spice and honors back in 1999 and 2001 and had been slated to repeat in 2018, although schedule conflicts prevented that year’s involvement. Patricia Kopatchinskaja stepped in, to memorable ends.
The May 9 CAMA concert, the finale of the organization’s “International Series” of visiting orchestras, is sure to be a highlight of the season, despite the disappointment of Boulez fans. The program opens with Debussy’s impressionistic landmark piece Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), and features the formidable Frenchman Pierre-Laurent Aimard on Bartók’s demanding and ear-engaging “Third Piano Concerto.” Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 “Eroica” makes for a robust endpiece to our latest L.A. Phil on State Street visitation, and to the CAMA series, at large.
To get a fuller picture of Salonen’s encounter with his L.A. Phil orchestral homestead, circa 2025 — the year of Boulez — check out the Granada concert (see camasb.org), but also head down to Disney Hall.
