Susanna Mälkki Returns to Disney Hall with a Splendidly Precise U.S. Premiere

The Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki, once principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, returned to Walt Disney Concert Hall on October 9, and Richard S. Ginell writes in SF Classical Voice that the orchestra played splendidly and precisely. Mälkki now works mostly in Europe and in opera, and teaches orchestral conducting at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. She opened with the U.S. premiere of Superorganisms (2022) by the Czech composer Miroslav Srnka, a 25-minute piece about the clash of the individual and the collective in which every player has an independent part. The critic hears a fuzzy, widely spaced and sensual fabric that seems to surround the listener, with two accordions used in unusual ways, and calls it astounding. Ryan Roberts, the orchestra's principal oboe, then played Martinů's Oboe Concerto of 1955 with a plush tone. Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra filled the second half. The orchestra has recorded it under three music directors, Previn, Salonen and Dudamel, yet Ginell believes Mälkki's acerbic, disciplined and buoyant reading would have topped them all. Photo: MITO SettembreMusica, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.