We are only human, after all. Or should I say, we are only machines, after all. Mimo II was premiered in December 1992. The oboe in Mimo II soon finds itself whirling about in dizzy Immelman turns and death spins, but nothing can disperse the vast empty space yawning beneath the soloist. Meanwhile the orchestra has decked itself out in glittering finery that reveals the experience accumulated by Salonen the conductor.
Tightrope walkers are among the greatest of artists.
They have only one chance to 'almost make it'. There are undoubtedly traits of the composer himself in both Floof , with its cyber-spinner pulling in all directions, and Mimo II, with its acrobat holding his breath behind his mask as the crowds cheer him on. Salonen's strings have almost certainly been pulled by many apart from the composer Salonen, but his turn will come again. The composer strikes back Mimo II was followed by a long silence and something in the nature of an aesthetic crisis that blew itself out in what is so far the biggest orchestral work to be composed, L.A. Variations of 1997. L.A. Variations is clearly the work of a new Salonen, open and readily approachable.