Los Angeles Philharmonic

From birdsong to birthdays, nature’s ritual communications and celebrations take center stage in a program that contemplates our feathered friends. LA Phil Creative Director Esa-Pekka Salonen leads Sibelius’ surging and soaring swan-inspired Fifth Symphony—a piece commissioned by the Finnish government to honor the composer’s 50th birthday—and the US premiere of Gabriella Smith’s How to Be A Bird.

A longtime advocate for environmental restoration and avian research, Smith often draws from her boundless wonder about wildlife when writing new music. “I try to put in all the emotions,” she says, “but joy is the one I care most about. It’s the joy that I experience from the natural world and, honestly, the joy of making music.”

The program opens with the sound of two solo flutes gliding and fluttering like Arctic birds. In Einojuhani Rautavaara’s 1972 neo-Romantic concerto, the orchestra performs with a recorded track of cooing, singing, and squawking birds, transporting its listeners to the mysteriously hypnotic shores and bogs of Finland.