MUSIC REVIEWS : PIANIST POGORELICH WITH PHILHARMONIC

There were other things on the agenda to take up the slack time, but nothing had a chance against Ivo Pogorelich’s playing of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Thursday.

It was a volcanic eruption with accompanying seismic disturbances.

The stripling pianist, slim and boyish, strides on stage looking a bit languid, possibly a bit bored. But once he sets to work he becomes a veritable demon, equally obsessed with ferocity and beauty. For all his reckless abandon, everything he does is obviously planned to the minutest detail; Pogorelich takes chances but he leaves nothing to chance.

His control is instantaneous. He can crash chords so brutally that the piano barks back at him, and the next moment with hardly a shift in gears, he is wooing from the instrument the pearliest tones and the subtlest phrasing.

He is master of his own style. It is a manner and style that will probably be widely imitated but that never can be wholly reproduced, for it is innate and unselfconscious; his persona and his style are one.

The audience found him and his idea of Prokofiev irresistible. That kind of wild acclaim has not been heard in the Pavilion since Horowitz played Rachmaninoff’s Third.

The visiting guest conductor was Herbert Blomstedt of the San Francisco Symphony. Unfortunately his weaknesses persistently overcome his strengths. He appears to be forthright and secure, but the orchestra playing is bedeviled with unclean attacks and shaky ensemble and the dynamic schemes tend to be uneven and miscalculated.

Sibelius’ “Tapiola” failed to establish the requisite eerie atmosphere. Much of the accompaniment for the Prokofiev was too brash for the soloist’s comfort. Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony suffered from a variety of intrusive adventures that mainly served to obscure Beethoven. But the easily impressed audience cheered.