CONDUCTOR BERGLUND LEADS PHILHARMONIC

A pleasant anonymity seems to characterize the conducting of Paavo Berglund, who made his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut Wednesday night (at a Pension Fund benefit), then began a two-week engagement as guest conductor with the orchestra the following night in the Pavilion of the Music Center.

In a tight program comprising Schumann’s “Spring” Symphony, the First Piano Concerto of Prokofiev and Beethoven’s Second Symphony, the 56-year-old Finnish musician Thursday showed again a competent podium manner, the strength of which seems not at all exacerbated by the fact that his is a left-hand, not a right-hand, baton technique.

Berglund showed also a penchant for quick and not invariably articulate tempos, and a no-nonsense approach to orchestral subtleties: Most of the time, he leaves the orchestra alone.

Diligent, dour and largely undemonstrative, Berglund seemed to express no new or novel ideas about Schumann’s First Symphony; with cool efficiency, he merely went through it.

Then, with the Bulgarian pianist, Juliana Markova, returning to the Philharmonic to display her winning ways with the Prokofiev concerto--as she had done in Hollywood Bowl seven years ago--Berglund presided stolidly over a reading that actually achieved notable heat.

The work, which Prokofiev created as his graduation piece from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, remains short and sweet, lightweight but charming, and full of opportunities for virtuoso display and pianistic glory. Markova made the most of it, aided neatly by conductor and orchestra.

The program (to be repeated Sunday afternoon) ended strongly with a nicely polished performance of the Second Symphony, one characterized by Classical reserve and numerous stylish details. If Berglund seemed uninterested in utilizing to full effect our orchestra’s many resources of dynamics and color, perhaps he will call upon them in his Sibelius program next week.