OLD-SCHOOL ROMANTIC : SANDERLING CONDUCTS A SPACIOUS SCHUBERT 9TH

For some reason, we don’t hear Schubert’s mighty Ninth Symphony as often as we did in the good old days.

Modern audiences may be confused by a massive work that steadfastly refuses to equate romantic grandeur with vulgar bombast.

More important, modern conductors may be daunted by Schubert’s bold and sprawling fusion of lyricism and drama, by his abidingly heroic perspective, by the inherent need for expressive refinement, and, yes, by what Robert Schumann defined as “heavenly length.”

Modern conductors tend to fall into one of two basic traps when they approach the “Great” C-major symphony.

At one extreme, they play it cool, fast and efficient, draining all eloquence from the lofty rhetoric. At the other extreme, they luxuriate in heart-on-sleeve bathos, contradicting Schubert’s aesthetic strictures and making the long seem longer.

Kurt Sanderling, 73, isn’t really a modern conductor. He belongs to a vanishing breed. He is a podium poet who understands the secrets of leisure and tension, who dares explore extremes of dynamics and tempo yet manages, invariably, to avoid exaggeration and easy effects.

A superior technician, he uses the music to call attention to the composer, not to himself. He is a man of ideas, a man of taste and, perhaps most enlightening, a man who respects a noble tradition.

Thursday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, he led the Los Angeles Philharmonic through the glories and subtleties of the Schubert Ninth in 55 minutes, and he made the voyage seem short.

He paced the first andante very slowly, very broadly. But he never lumbered, never hesitated. The opening statements announced lofty intentions, the subsequent development confirmed majestic impact.

Savoring the force of architectural contrasts, he imbued the second movement with propulsive elegance of phrase and transparency of texture. In the scherzo, he introduced an element of rhapsodic freedom that stopped safely short of frenzy, and in the allegro vivace he delivered thunder that struck with natural, climactic finality.

Throughout, he sustained compelling poise and a sense of balance. He attained poignancy without undue perspiration. It was an interpretive revelation.

It was such a revelation, in fact, that one wanted to overlook performance blemishes that suggested the Philharmonic may be fighting end-of-the-season blahs. Those who heard the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony under Sanderling last week reported that our orchestra had never sounded better. One couldn’t make that claim this week.

To open the program, Sanderling presided over a spacious, thoughtful, moody and somewhat cumbersome performance of Mozart’s G-minor Symphony, K. 550.