MARCOVICI’S RETURN TO HOLLYWOOD BOWL

No disasters, or even mishaps, marred the final Tuesday night concert of the summer season at Hollywood Bowl. Yet a more lackluster event would be hard to imagine.

Sir Charles Groves, beginning a second week on the podium of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, led perfunctory and uneventful performances of Schubert’s “Rosamunde” Overture and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. For him, our Philharmonic played creditably but without inspiration or buoyancy.

To be sure, Silvia Marcovici, returning to the Bowl after a five-year absence, brought fire and illumination to Brahms’ Violin Concerto; given the Romanian-born musician’s gifts, achievement and talent for projection, that could be no surprise. Yet she seemed mostly unable to raise her colleagues to more than pleasant lethargy--though all forces contributed handsomely to a highly poetic and integrated realization of the central Adagio.

With radiant tone and immaculate passage work, Marcovici surmounted all difficulties and clarified all structures in her virtuosic, impassioned but tightly controlled readings of the outer movements. Unfortunately, conductor and orchestra gave the appearance of being observers, not participants, in this Olympian, but solo, demonstration.

Sir Charles’ thoughts seemed to be otherwise occupied during the Schubert and Beethoven works, both of which emerged insufficiently characterized. The “Rosamunde” excerpt moved along, charmlessly. Beethoven’s Fifth lacked only a recognition of Beethoven’s demons, tempos of genuine motivation, and the inexorable thrust that should mark the composer’s style. Without these, any performance becomes merely a run-through. This one certainly did, from its nervous beginning right through its non-cathartic ending.

Attendance: 8,593.