MUSIC REVIEWS : L.A. PHILHARMONIC

For a Thanksgiving feast that wasn’t a turkey, you could have gone to the Music Center Pavilion Saturday evening--if you could have gotten a ticket. All the tickets for the free concert by the Los Angeles Philharmonic reportedly were distributed, although downstairs, at least, there were large blocks of empty seats.

The fare was standard Americana-cum-pops. Conductor Heiichiro Ohyama, however, would be more familiar to Philharmonic audiences with a bow rather than a baton. The orchestra’s principal violist, he also directs several chamber orchestras in Southern California.

Ohyama was willing to emote, and put some body language into his conducting. But most often he proved precise in gesture and thoughtful in musical intentions. His account of Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony seemed to move by studied points, lacking a sense of sweeping connections.

In a similar way, Ohyama did not make the narrative line in Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story” clear and urgent. He did maintain the rapt intensity of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and impart sassy bounce to two Dances from Copland’s “Rodeo.”

The Philharmonic provided the lean sound and clear textures Ohyama seemed to want. He allowed the brass and percussion free rein, which drove the Symphonic Dances effectively. Elsewhere, however, it produced some odd balances.

The orchestra’s management apparently felt the occasion required a host. Mario Machado exerted a suave physical and vocal presence in exhorting support for the Philharmonic. But his introductions merely repeated the program information, and his brief interview with Ohyama proved embarrassingly inane.