FOSTER ON PODIUM : PERLMAN BEGINS WEEK AT THE BOWL

This seems to be Itzhak Perlman Week at Hollywood Bowl.

Tuesday night, everybody’s favorite violinist--well, nearly everybody’s--played the Tchaikovsky Concerto as the focal point in an all-Russian program by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Lawrence Foster. For a preconcert warm-up, incidentally, he graced a TV talk show.

Wednesday Perlman was scheduled to attempt to transform the 17,600-seat amphitheater into an intimate recital hall for an evening of sonatas and other little pieces. Tonight he returns for the Bruch Concerto and Sarasate’s “Carmen” Fantasy.

Some people can’t seem to get enough of a good thing. Or give enough.

Perlman’s status as a fiddling superstar seems to protect him from the customary dangers of overwork or overexposure. Tuesday night, normally a quiet night at Cahuenga Pass, he attracted a crowd officially tabulated at 16,680. He also inspired traffic jams and push-button euphoria.

He even managed--don’t tell me these matters were accidental--to tame the recalcitrant amplification system and to banish most of the usual aeronautical intruders from the sky. Never underestimate the power of a well-hyped, telegenic folk hero.

And how did he play good old Tchaikovsky? He played with staggering technical brilliance, with silken tone, with easy amplitude, with a dazzling array of neatly differentiated dynamic effects, with uncanny assurance, finesse and authority. He commands his instrument as few mortals can.

And yet he seemed, somehow, to be playing on automatic pilot. For all the external beauties projected, one sensed little emotional involvement, little intellectual stimulation, little interpretive thrust.

In this, his umpteenth traversal of Tchaikovsky’s greatest hit, Perlman was content to dwell on marvelously polished surfaces. He left the deeper substances of the score unprobed, unquestioned, untouched.

This, without doubt, was a great night for violin playing. It wasn’t such a great night, however, for music making.

Ever attentive and ever supportive, Foster provided stylish accompaniment. At the beginning of the program, he brought comparable elegance to a Prokofiev rarity, the “Overture on Hebrew Themes” written in 1919 and expanded for large orchestra in 1934. It is a well made, mildly jaunty, essentially lyrical little study, ingratiating but of no major consequence.

After intermission, he turned to Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” not in the customary orchestration of Maurice Ravel but in a new transcription by Vladimir Ashkenazy.

The transcription takes some getting used to. Where Ravel favored flamboyance and a broad repertory of splashy coloristic devices, Ashkenazy prefers muted accents, primitive strokes and somber hues. The new “Pictures” reveal all the familiar figures, but there are decisive shifts in light and focus, decisive losses in instrumental detail and character definition.

Foster stressed the virtue of restraint in a performance more notable for clarity than for tension or bravado. The Philharmonic responded as if it longed for Ravel, or at least for a few more rehearsals.