PREVIN, WATTS : A LITTLE LISZT GOES A LONG WAY

British music seems to be Andre Previn’s cup of tea, as it were.

Our maestro has a grateful affinity for comfy, controlled, symphonic civility. That, no doubt, explains why he opened his fifth program as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Wednesday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with Vaughan Williams’ chronically soothing Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and closed it with Elgar’s quaintly reflective “Enigma” Variations.

But our new maestro likes contrasts, too. That, no doubt, explains why he devoted the middle portion of the evening--the portion that enlisted the whiz-bang skills of Andre Watts--to the splashy vulgarity of this year’s 100th-death-day hero Franz Liszt.

The focal point, and a very odd one, was the Philharmonic premiere of Liszt’s “Malediction,” written ca. 1840. For all we know (and that usually isn’t enough), the performance in question may have been a Los Angeles premiere, as well. With luck it also will be a derniere.

Some masterpieces languish in unwarranted neglect for a century or more. Some neglected pieces by masterful composers swiftly achieve the oblivion they deserve. Consign “Malediction” to the latter category. This little Liszt has not been missed.

It is, without doubt, a curio, a potentially interesting aberration, a gutsy experiment that ought to be heard. Once.

It also happens to be one of the most incoherent indulgences of the 19th Century. The cursed thing is a shapeless, pointless, directionless exercise in thumping bombast alleviated, occasionally, by wimpy surface sentiment.

The composer did, to be sure, experiment here with some boldly dissonant clashes; unfortunately, they sound more like like inadvertent wrong notes than harmonic adventure. The composer did, to be sure, offer his soloist some gargantuan digital dazzle; unfortunately, it ends up sounding like a lot of frantic doodling.

Andre Watts, a poet with jet-propelled fingers of steel, did what could be done. And more. Previn’s strings strung along a bit reticently. It didn’t matter.

Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto is hardly a model of economy, focus or refinement. It is, in fact, a prime example of crashing romantic drivel. “Eine kleine Junkmusik,” you might say. Following the “Malediction,” it sounded like pristine Mozart.

Those who admire the pretty pathos of Vaughan Williams and Elgar could only be delighted with the outer portions of the concert. Previn paid a great deal of attention to inner voices, to subtle balances, to color distinctions, to cumulative tensions and to such basics as warmth of tone and clarity of form. The orchestra responded most sympathetically.

This week he proved himself a first-rate conductor of second-rate music.