BERGLUND CONDUCTS : STERN PLAYS 2 CONCERTOS AT BENEFIT

Isaac Stern has been playing concertos with the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 1936. He was just 16 the first time around, when none less than Otto Klemperer manned the podium for him.

In the intervening decades, he has become a beloved institution. He has established himself as an artist who really knows how to juggle flash and refinement, and he has more than lived up to his oft-avowed motto: “Use the violin to make music; never use music just to play the violin.”

Wednesday night, Stern was back for a pension-fund benefit. He ventured not one but two popular concertos: the Mendelssohn and the Bruch. An audience that had paid up to $100 per ticket at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion afforded the instant hero not one but two standing ovations. Everyone seemed happy.

But if one could put aside push-button responses and really listen, one could notice something unsettling. This really wasn’t Stern’s finest hour.

Sometimes he played with his customary expressive conviction; sometimes he seemed to be functioning on automatic pilot. Sometimes his tone emerged as pure and silken as memory insists; sometimes it became harsh and strident. Sometimes the bravura flourishes sparkled; sometimes they fizzled. Sometimes the intonation was perfect; sometimes it wasn’t.

It was obvious that Stern wanted to make the Mendelssohn elegant and dashing. It was obvious that he wanted to make the Bruch soulful but not too sentimental. It was obvious, too, that there was a gap between intentions and achievements.

The disappointments might be attributed, simply, to an off-night. Even the greatest artists are entitled to them.

The problems might relate to the passage of time. Even Stern is getting no younger.

The difficulties also might have something to do with the sort of collaboration provided by Paavo Berglund, the Finnish conductor making his Los Angeles debut. He obviously is a solid technician (though his left-handed baton maneuvers require some mental adjustment). He is celebrated as a Sibelius specialist. On this occasion, however, he provided little interpretive inspiration, and he revealed limited sensitivity for the intimate give-and-take of stresses and nuances favored by the soloist.

A rigid orchestral framework cannot bring out the best in an essentially flexible, thoughtful, often mercurial musician like Stern.

Berglund’s symphonic skills will be better judged as his two-week guest engagement here progresses. Wednesday, he beat time knowingly for a routine, none-too-dramatic traversal of the overture to Weber’s “Freischuetz,” and rushed the band through rowdy if not exactly rousing performances of excerpts from Smetana’s “Bartered Bride.”

At least it was all for a good cause.