Beethoven & Dessner (with Esa-Pekka Salonen)

December 8, 2025, 10:00 pm

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Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting in moody, darkly lit photo
Esa-Pekka Salonen (Photo: Minna Hatinen for Finnish National Opera and Ballet)

For well over two hundred years, the “Eroica” Symphony has been celebrated as one of Beethoven’s greatest works and one of the most revolutionary masterpieces in classical music. Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the LA Philharmonic in this powerful piece of defiance, contrasting it with Debussy’s dreamy and fluid Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. Pekka Kuusisto, a fellow Finn and one of Salonen’s favorite collaborators, joins the orchestra for Bryce Dessner’s Violin Concerto, which Kuusisto describes as “super energetic, and athletic, active—but it’s the big changes of scenery that really make it magic.”

Playlist

Claude Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Los Angeles Philharmonic; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor

Bryce Dessner: Violin Concerto
Los Angeles Philharmonic; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor
Pekka Kuusisto, violin

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3, “Eroica”
Los Angeles Philharmonic; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor