PHILHARMONIC GOES MODERN --FOR A NIGHT

Two weeks ago, Andre Previn and the Los Angeles Philharmonic offended a large number of Thursday-night subscribers at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. By daring to play the mild and thoughtful, 36-year-old “Spring Symphony” of Benjamin Britten, our orchestral champions sent the resident push-button anti-modernists home early. A little Mozartean warm-up exercise was all they could take.

This Thursday, under guest-conductor Leonard Slatkin, the Philharmonic really threw conservatism to the winds, after a fashion. The orchestra went mod in a one-night stand with New Music America 1985, opening the sprawling experimental festival in question with a trio of premieres.

This time there was no standard-repertory bait. There were no easy-to-take, golden-oldie concessions. This time there was no quasi-glamorous new music director on the podium. This time there were few tricks and fewer treats.

And this time there were hardly any mutineers out front. The unfaithful regulars didn’t flee in midconcert. They simply didn’t come at all.

The Pavilion yawned with empty seats, and those who did show up to sample an evening of Erickson, Rudhyar and Adams certainly didn’t resemble the staid Series-B crowd. They seemed to represent a younger, more open-minded and open-eared public.

They couldn’t fill the vast open spaces in the 3,200-seat hall, but they did listen attentively, did applaud innocently at the end of every movement, and when it was all over, did muster a gradually-standing ovation in which cheers blanketed the occasional, brave but lonely boo.

Under the circumstances, it would have been especially nice to be able to report that the Philharmonic discovered three deathless masterpieces and performed them brilliantly. Unfortunately, much of what was heard sounded just plain timid, dutiful, muddled and/or trendy.

One applauded the inherent good intentions. One savored the clever craft. One left frustrated. At least this one did.

Robert Erickson’s “Auroras,” written in 1982 and newly revised, opened the program with a neat network of shimmering, ethereal sonorities uniting brass, winds and exotic percussion.

The 68-year-old San Diegan knowingly fuses allusions to bird calls, otherworldly drones, glistening chimes and swooning lyrical exclamations, primitively contrasted with an economical patch of percussive rumbles. On first hearing, it is all very sweet, very pretty, and a little vapid.

Dane Rudhyar’s “Encounter,” which followed, bears the subtitle “Dramatic Sequence in Five Scenes for Piano and Orchestra.” It also seems to bear more nostalgic appeal than musical profundity.

A grand old individualist who concentrated on painting and astrology as well as composition, Rudhyar first attracted local attention back in 1922, when he was 27. At that dark and distant time, his tone poem, “Soul Fire,” won a Philharmonic composition contest. Upon closer scrutiny, however, the orchestra deemed the piece too difficult for performance.

Our orchestra managed to ignore Rudhyar for the intervening 63 years. To say that the gesture made on his behalf Thursday was belated is something of an understatement. The composer died last September, 8 years after completing the “Encounter” he never heard.

Had he heard it, he might have changed it. As it stands, it is a big, halting, thick-textured conversation that pits massive symphonic forces against a constantly submerged piano. It is possible that the balances could be improved with more rehearsal time, with better acoustical conditions, and with a conductor who is able to coax compelling expression from his players as well as the right notes.

In any case, the premiere performance revealed the workings of an agitated poetic spirit, ambitious application of some bold principles of over-ripe romanticism, and a lot of somber, opaque, inarticulate busy-music.

Ursula Oppens, the piano soloist, strove diligently to assert herself and to sustain coherence in her Philharmonic debut.

The presumed piece de resistance took the simple if not simplistic form of John Adams’ “Harmonielehre” (1985), in its first Los Angeles performance. This is a splashy, eclectic essay that strives, in turn, for sentimental affect, heroic pathos, big-band pizazz, lush-texture anaesthesia, and--what else?--climactic stretches of minimalist hypnosis.

At 38, Adams is too worldly to bludgeon his listeners with endless and mindless repetitions. He stops short of bludgeoning.

He doesn’t provide a great deal of melodic development or harmonic sophistication, however, and the beauties of his ideas tend to remain surface beauties. Although the basic structure is solid, the contents seem a bit mushy. Nevertheless, the grand finale manipulates dynamic tension to a degree that virtually orchestrates bravos into the delayed cadence.

Slatkin and the orchestra worked hard.

It may be worth noting, incidentally, that there are definite limits to Philharmonic adventure. Although the first evening in the current series was exclusively modern, Erickson and Rudhyar were to give way to familiar Beethoven by Friday. Beethoven is to coexist with lonely Adams for three concerts, but next Wednesday accessible Adams yields his place to even-more accesible Dvorak. Sic transit gloria . . . .