VIENNA PHILHARMONIC : CLAUDIO ABBADO CONDUCTS BEETHOVEN

The Vienna Philharmonic played it safe Sunday night at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, where the orchestra appeared for a one-night stand under the auspices of the Ambassador Foundation.

The program, for which the best tickets cost $60, was restricted to a pair of ever-popular Beethoven symphonies.

The conductor was Claudio Abbado, the glamorous Italian music director of the Vienna Staatsoper and, as such, the resident orchestral boss by default.

The Philharmonic--not to be confused with its poor cousin, the Vienna Symphony--has been one of the wonders of the music world for nearly 150 years. Vastly dissimilar conductors have come and gone, but the ensemble has retained its essential mellowness, resonance and warmth, its extraordinary dynamic sensitivity and its uncanny ability to make even the most grandiose statement seem intimate.

The orchestra today may not be the precision instrument it was during the prime Karajan years. It certainly isn’t the heroic instrument it could be under Furtwaengler. Even so, the standard remains lofty, the sonic character unique.

In passing, one may wonder when this elite Viennese fraternity will join the 20th Century and admit women to the ranks. One also cannot help but notice, in this day of creeping Waldheimism, that the roster lists few if any obviously Jewish names. But we digress.

The Viennese gentlemen certainly know and love their Beethoven. One can’t take that away from them. They play Beethoven as if to the manner born, which, of course, they were.

They also play him with uncommon degrees of dedication and urgency. In this encouraging instance, familiarity does not seem to have bred contempt.

Los Angeles audiences may have expected Abbado to approach Beethoven as Carlo Maria Giulini did--slowly, with a constant stress on breadth, majesty and spacious poetry. If Abbado has a stylistic forebear, however, it would seem to be an older Italian model: Toscanini.

The fast tempos, the expressive propulsion, the rhetorical integrity, the lyrical finesse, all point to the Toscanini tradition. Abbado’s musical gestures, however, are less muscular, and the Viennese orchestra responds to them with an aura of Gemuetlichkeit that Toscanini would never have tolerated.

The strings played with extraordinary suavity and flexibility on Sunday, but the winds often succumbed to insecure pitch, and the brass sometimes tended toward the raucous. It is possible that the new stage-shell at the Civic Auditorium (shocking pink) introduced some acoustical distortion. Whatever the reason, technical perfection did not seem a high priority.

Compounding the problem, Abbado offered little inspiration in the First Symphony. He delineated the early-Beethoven aesthetic with careful clarity. He sustained momentum and enforced grace. He offered a sophisticated performance, to be sure. But, for some strange reason, he ignored most opportunities for individual illumination.

Under the circumstances, one returned for the Third Symphony, after intermission, with some trepidation. A bland “Eroica,” after all, is no “Eroica.”

It wasn’t bland. It was vibrantly colored, subtly nuanced, taut and tense. Abbado banished all thought of sentimental indulgence, just as he avoided any trace of bombast.

Although he scaled the mighty “Eroica” down to human proportions, he never lost sight of the inherent nobility. He gave us lean yet lofty Beethoven, Beethoven with admirable poise and infectious spirit.

Ultimately, it was compelling, even uplifting, in its own, curiously short-winded way. One doesn’t always need grandeur. One doesn’t always want blood, sweat and tears.