Daily Bruin Contributor

Love's triumph may seem all too hackneyed a theme for modern listeners, but Saturday night the Los Angeles Philharmonic forcefully revived it. Though Schoenberg may have been Brahms with wrong notes, the Philharmonic placed the two great composers side by side in a somewhat risky program. The result of this pairing promptly melted away any doubts the listener might have as to the existence of beauty in the world.

Schoenberg's "Pelleas and Melisande" began the concert with an ominous air. The tone poem was an early Schoenberg work and, therefore, did not have the screeches and wails that his later style demanded. Indeed, though the piece caused a bit of a controversy in its premiere about 100 years ago, the emotions of the music resonated today in a most loving manner. People who still regard Schoenberg as the guy who destroyed classical music actually ought to listen to his compositions.

The music depicts a love triangle that ends in tragic death. Though composed in the early 1900s, it harkens back to the Romantic era with its lush chromatic harmonies and orchestrations. For example, the opening features only the winds and low string instruments, making the violin entrance such a powerful statement when it arrives.

The use of motifs, or recurring themes, plays a great role even though they are not obvious melodies like those in Gershwin tunes. In a Wagnerian mode, Schoenberg pulls out a piece that never resolves, instead it aches endlessly for its fulfillment, which never arrives.

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted quite intensely, especially at the climaxes that dotted the musical landscape. The clarity of this dense music found its way into a clean, but deeply felt interpretation. The huge orchestra, including eight French horns, four trumpets, five trombones and eight timpani, created an equally large sound, aided with only a small microphone boost. The 40-minute piece stirred the imagination and allowed the Philharmonic to show off with Schoenberg's dazzling orchestral colors.

The second piece of the night, however, focused on Helene Grimaud, the French pianist who played earlier last year at the Hollywood Bowl. In Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, Grimaud held the stage with such passion that her applause would have lasted much longer had the orchestra not left hastily. The piece began much as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony begins, displaying Brahms' devotion to the Beethovenian model. Both pieces are in D minor and both end victoriously. In the concert, however, the victory was not simply for that piece of music, but for the entire night at the concert. In a sense, Brahms resolved Schoenberg.

The first two movements of the concerto seemed to be general material, passionate but not terribly virtuosic in the way of Rachmaninoff or even Chopin. Having been originally composed as a sonata for two pianos, the concerto felt bare at times, though the Philharmonic worked very hard to give it fullness. Grimaud sparkled with the demanding trills and scalar passagework.

However, it wasn't until the final movement that the whole concerto and even the whole concert began to make sense. The Philharmonic strategy seems to be play an old war horse last so that you can make people stay for a riskier piece. Indeed, Brahms provided the war horse and Schoenberg the element of risk. Yet the concert worked on the even greater level of being the Romantic answer to cynicism the same way Beethoven's Ninth was his answer to the disillusionment of the French Revolution.

Wiping away the cobwebs, Salonen's Philharmonic seems ripe and ready to make Los Angeles a major classical musical.