HARBISON PREMIERE : PREVIN SURVEYS MODERN ROMANTICS

While the Joffrey Ballet assumes jumpers’ rights at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is taking to the road. This week: Royce Hall, UCLA. Next week: the East Coast.

The 15-mile trip west, Sunday afternoon, turned out to be something of a romantic pilgrimage. It also produced something of a sonic revelation.

The program chosen by Andre Previn surveyed familiar romantic traits: broad emotional indulgences, generous dynamic contrasts, surging melodic inventions, safe harmonic structures, dazzling bravura flights, bold theatrical flourishes, mighty climaxes and abiding freedom from classical constraints.

All this, of course, might suggest a selection of relatively easy pieces by Brahms, Schubert, Strauss and/or Mahler. But Previn, ever the pragmatist, gave us a less predictable agenda devoted to the 20th-century romanticism of John Harbison (anno 1981), Carlos Chavez (1950) and George Gershwin (1925).

The boldly conservative impulses sounded particularly appealing in the dark, mellow, rich acoustic of Royce Hall--a hall that now gives our orchestra more sonic presence and greater bass response than one can expect at “home,” downtown. One could savor ample reverberation and fine definition even from a seat beneath the balcony overhang, at the rear of the campus auditorium.

This, obviously, was not a concert designed for symphonic adventure. As presently constituted, the Philharmonic may leave the avant-garde to Pierre Boulez. This was, however, a concert that came up with at least one useful reminder: There still is life in the old rhetorical devices.

Harbison’s Symphony No. 1 was receiving its West Coast premiere (the world premiere took place in Boston two years ago). It is a sensitively crafted, delicately balanced, large-scale essay that acknowledges a rich tradition yet speaks with a rational, personal voice.

Our incipient composer-in-residence understands the impact of the grandiose gesture, but he also knows the dangers of overstatement. His symphony, which lasts only about half an hour, peppers conventional procedures with mildly unconventional accents.

It also respects the distinction between bathos and pathos. It broods, expands and builds, always tensely and always colorfully.

Harbison compels admiration. In the final analysis, however, his music seems just a smidgen more accessible, more obvious than one might wish. It soothes the listener--this listener, at least--just when he most wants to be challenged. A little more ear-stretching wouldn’t hurt.

Chavez’s dramatic, unjustly neglected Violin Concerto is an urgent yet elegant lyrical essay that makes superhuman demands on its protagonist. It, too, scores its points with welcome economy; it, too, wraps primitive ideas in sophisticated expressive blankets.

Sidney Weiss, the Philharmonic concertmaster, brought uncommon degrees of passion and poise to the solo convolutions, a few strident ascents into the stratosphere notwithstanding. Those accustomed to hearing him elsewhere were astonished, moreover, by the massive breadth of tone at his apparent command.

Previn conducted with calm, selfless authority throughout, and the orchestra played splendidly for him.

At Gershwin time, after intermission, he opted for double duty in the Concerto in F, crouching at the keyboard for the solos, bobbing up to wave his a hand at the band when a hand happened to be unoccupied.

This is not the most efficient way to meet the multifaceted challenge, and Previn’s generally fleet pianism sometimes got lost in the orchestral shuffle. Nevertheless, if anyone appreciates the high-brow-funk idiom in question, it is our maestro. On this occasion, he conveyed the joys of that idiom with warmth and elan, without vulgarity or condescension.

Style, as Confucius said, is everything.