ATHERTON CONDUCTS

On Thursday, David Atherton led the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the first of four concerts at the Music Center. No great wonder in itself--the peripatetic English conductor has done so before.

But considering the controversy surrounding the dissolution of the San Diego Symphony, which he directed, Atherton must have been relieved to confront only musical issues, at least for an evening. His program included a pair of bravura vehicles for the orchestra, and the Philharmonic responded with persuasive power and sparkle.

The first of these was the West Coast premiere of Joan Tower’s “Island Rhythms.” Commissioned for the opening of Harbour Island, Fla., the composer describes “Island Rhythms” as “celebratory.”

But there was nothing particularly playful about the 7 1/2-minute work. The celebration there is a solemn, heavy-handed, even menacing one. The emphasis is on dark, minor-mode colors in the lower range, and instead of perceptible themes, Tower juggles contrasted blocks of sound, often consisting of fiercely stated tones and chords.

In its energy, sheer sonic force, and some aspects of the orchestration, “Island Rhythms” also makes an effective partner to “Petrushka.” Atherton displayed no profound rethinking of Stravinsky’s 1947 revision, but if his was a generic “Petrushka,” it was also a very crisp, tidy one.

Perhaps too tidy. The first half of the ballet sounded earnestly square and slightly slow, as though the dance were reduced to a slide show. Atherton is a continually busy, though not excessively gymnastic, conductor, and the results seemed to rein in the wonderfully impetuous drive of the music.

Between the orchestral razzle-dazzle came Mozart’s urgent D-minor Piano Concerto. The solo part lay in the always fluent hands of Richard Goode, who treated it with a muted passion at once understated and endlessly active. His subdued dynamic scale of sharply controlled nuance occasionally sounded remote.

Atherton led a reduced orchestra in an accompaniment that sometimes covered Goode’s more introspective efforts. The woodwind/piano exchanges in the Finale, however, proved perfectly balanced.