MUSIC REVIEWS : PREVIN CONDUCTS ECLECTIC PROGRAM

Just as looking through a kaleidoscope from the front end induces in the watcher an almost clinical visual clarity, hearing a musical program in reverse chronological order can produce in the listener a startling aural focus. It can also revise one’s perspective.

The backwards program Andre Previn devised and conducted for performances of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the Pavilion of the Music Center this week actually did neither. It merely put together three works that may or may not have a common thread, but that do not seem to be related.

At the first performance, Thursday night, this agenda of John Harbison’s First Symphony (1981), the Cello Concerto (1919) by Elgar and Haydn’s Symphony No. 102 (1794) proved agreeable in that its separate parts did not clash unduly; they also did little to illuminate each other.

Yo-Yo Ma’s eloquent advocacy of the Elgar Concerto, a work of frequent appearance on Philharmonic programs in the past decade--and the subject of Ma’s award-winning recording with Previn and this orchestra--provided a touching centerpiece to this concert.

Not all orchestral balances emerged finished, and the soloist often flirted (as he can) with inaudibility, yet the total reading had poetry and passion in abundance, and Previn’s and the orchestra’s contributions never failed to support the prevailing musical context. Moreover, a friendly audience listened attentively, then responded in loud approbation at the conclusion.

Surrounding this affectionate performance were similarly careful and well-gauged run-throughs of the Harbison and Haydn symphonies.

Harbison’s First, introduced to the West Coast in a Royce Hall concert last May and taken on tour by Previn and the Philharmonic thereafter--it will also grace the orchestra’s European tour this Spring--remains a thoroughly likeable, big-orchestra essay in poetic understatement.

Neo-Barberian in harmonic pungency, melodious and expansive, it reaches its emotional peak in a handsome Adagio, after which it adopts a more bourgeois (i.e., Bernsteinesque) tone, one in which it rides to a breezy conclusion, arriving there--on this occasion--merely 23 minutes after leaving the gate.

After an uncharacteristically ragged beginning, Previn and his colleagues brought to Haydn’s late B-flat Symphony a most pleasing mix of transparency, clarity and controlled wit, a reading only in a few moments more hard-bitten than one might expect.