MUSIC REVIEW : SLATKIN, BRONFMAN AT HOLLYWOOD BOWL

It was supposed to be a program of Russian hits, the kind that suits Hollywood Bowl and its hum-along crowds perfectly, the kind that fulfills images of ideal summer evenings under the stars.

But Leonard Slatkin, Thursday’s podium master, altered the musical map that the Los Angeles Philharmonic followed, and pianist Yefim Bronfman also managed to veer slightly off course.

Instead of the originally scheduled Fifth Symphony of Prokofiev, Slatkin substituted the same-numbered work by Shostakovich. The change turned out to be significant. And even though the high-profile Prokofiev can withstand the Bowl’s sonic liabilities better than the inverted anguish of Shostakovich, one could appreciate this break from the format.

Nevertheless, there were times when it seemed as though listening to a small table radio would have brought similar results to the 9,633 assembled. Poor Shostakovich. His somber attenuations kept getting lost on the balmy breezes. Ditto his fine-spun pathos and arching melancholy. The same delicately wrought chromatic tensions that can hold a listener enthralled in the concert hall evaporated here. And even the roaring counterforces left something to be desired.

For some, however, the game of filling in the gaps and imagining the work’s impact under better circumstances had its challenges. And, for what could be heard, the orchestra displayed a sense of commitment. But one suspects that Slatkin could have exerted a bolder presence at the helm and rescued the drowning victim.

He and Bronfman encountered different problems in Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto. The soloist had his own provocative idea about this pops paragon, one that didn’t exactly jibe with the conductor’s. Unfortunately, it was an idea that requires indoor intimacy, and to hear the Russian-born Israeli eschew the heart-on-sleeve rhetoric of “Full Moon and Empty Arms” in favor of an almost Brahmsian inwardness is to arouse musical curiosity.

Given the alternatives of tinkle-plinkle or thud-mud that the amplified piano usually inherits in Cahuenga Pass, Bronfman had to rely more on gesture than sound quality.

And if Slatkin couldn’t offer the last word in accompanimental mutuality, at least he had superior control of the orchestra--a point he underscored in the Overture to Glinka’s “Russlan and Ludmilla,” where he displayed both his neatly propulsive, perfunctory ways with the music and his newly found ability to jump in the air.