ITZHAK PERLMAN’S WEEK AT BOWL CONTINUES

When Itzhak Perlman gave his first recital in Hollywood Bowl, 11 years ago this month, the crowd of 2,164 auditors attending that event--the very first violin recital in Cahuenga Pass--seemed a large one, everything considered.

When the 39-year old Israeli violinist returned to the amphitheater Wednesday night for the second of three appearances there this week, his sixth Bowl recital drew an audience counted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic management at 11,007. In some areas, clearly, inflation survives.

Perlman’s success is easy to describe: He plays the violin masterfully, with nearly irresistible musicality, a prodigious technique and abundant personal charm.

The disappointment one sometimes feels at a Perlman performance is less easy to put into words. It has something to do with a facility that can become glib, an artistic personality that often skims where probing is called for, and a generalized approach to music of differing periods and styles.

Disappointment cropped up at several points in the recital performance Perlman gave, with the assistance of pianist Janet Guggenheim, Wednesday night.

It offered wonderful moments, especially in a handsome realization of the Third Sonata of Edvard Grieg, and in the nine violinistic miniatures--by Lukas Foss, Fritz Kreisler, Rudolf Novacek and Pablo de Sarasate--that made up the post-intermission portion of the program.

At the same time, it also achieved emotional and musical shallows--in both Beethoven’s A-minor Sonata and the Grieg work--and incomplete definition of the many possible contrasts here juxtaposed.

Such achievement is explained only partly by the evanescent nature of music making at the Bowl--the relatively fragile sounds created by a single violin and a single grand piano on the stage in front of the acoustical shell tends to evaporate even as it is produced. But it tends to evaporate even more quickly when the performers, for all their expertise, seem less than fully commited to the music at hand. In this program, Perlman/Guggenheim performed with equal transparency, lightness of touch and emotional intensity the genuine, post-Romantic boldness of Grieg’s C-minor Sonata and an overarranged, commercial, soupily chromatic transcription of “Londonderry Air.”

What turned out most successfully were Foss’ post-Ivesian morceaux from the 1940s, and two Sarasate pieces, a “Romanza Andaluza” and, to conclude the program proper, “Zapateado.” In all of these, Perlman made round, clear and gorgeous tones and let these melodies speak for themselves, while Guggenheim provided unobtrusive but solid support.

Two encores followed: a transcription of Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor, and Bazzini’s “Dance of the Goblins.”