EAST COAST TOUR : PHILHARMONIC GETS MIXED REVIEWS

For music critics covering the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s just-concluded three-week tour of the East Coast, a major attraction was the New York conducting debut of Simon Rattle.

The Philharmonic, which was on tour from Jan. 17 through Sunday, played 14 concerts in New York, Florida, North Carolina and Washington, D.C.

Reviews of Rattle--and of the orchestra’s other principal guest conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas--were generally lukewarm. The Philharmonic itself drew mixed reactions from the press.

Donal Henahan, writing in the New York Times about the Jan. 18 Carnegie Hall concert, criticized Rattle’s handling of the first two movements of Mahler’s Symphony No. 10, but expressed approval of the final two: “Mr. Rattle took his time (in the finale), patiently letting the mood darken and the music wind down into lifelessness.”

Henahan observed that Rattle, who turned 30 on the tour, “has played his career cards shrewdly so far and happens to be good. How good? That will take some time to discover.”

On the other hand, Peter G. Davis of New York magazine expressed disappointment at the Carnegie event and at a subsequent concert in Avery Fisher Hall: “If the good word on Rattle had not preceded him, the conductor’s work would have been respectfully heard, quietly noted and quickly absorbed . . . without leaving much of a trace.”

The orchestra, Davis noted, “was partially to blame. . . . Muddy textures, patches of poor intonation and tentative attacks kept undermining almost every good intention.”

Will Crutchfield of the New York Times reviewed the Fisher Hall concert, praising the “firm, fresh vigor” of Rattle’s reading of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2. However, he pointed out that the Liverpool-born conductor’s habit of creating orchestral climaxes that come “not as the crests of waves but as sudden bursts or geysers of sound. . . . The orchestra sound itself . . . seemed a collection of effects rather than a massed voice.”

Tilson Thomas similarly drew mixed reviews after appearances in New York, Washington and Miami. James Roos of the Miami Herald wrote: “As a conductor, (Tilson Thomas) has a rare breadth of style.” Praise was given the performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5: “(Tilson Thomas) blended all its melodic strands in a mellow haze that seemed to express the final flowering of romanticism.”

Reviewing the Carnegie and Fisher Hall concerts, Thor Eckert Jr. of the Christian Science Monitor gave high marks to Tilson Thomas’ reading of the Mahler (“the finest in my concert-going experience”), but was more reserved in his comments on Rattle. Eckert called Tilson Thomas “the outstanding young American conductor today.” Eckert pointed to Rattle’s “lack of passion (as) the overriding problem . . . of Mahler’s 10th Symphony. . . . Melodies did not soar; tempos sounded rushed or stodgy. . . . The spark of originality (in Rattle’s conducting), the fire of creativity has yet to manifest itself.”

Bernard Holland, reviewing a different program one week later in the New York Times, described Tilson Thomas as “one whose musical ideas veer often to distressing extremes.” Holland, however, lauded the Philharmonic’s “dusky, mahogany-like warmth unusual in American orchestras.”

Washington Post critic Joseph McLellan heard Tilson Thomas conduct a program of Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky and Copland on Feb. 1 that he described as “Hollywood Comes to the Kennedy Center,” and noted that the Philharmonic “is a fine orchestra, and on a good evening (of which last night was one) it can sometimes outplay the orchestras from Boston, Cleveland, New York or Philadelphia when they are feeling slightly below par.”