KORD CONDUCTS : WARSAW PHILHARMONIC PLAYS AT MUSIC CENTER

For its first concert in a three-performance visit to Southern California this week, the Warsaw Philharmonic programmed no music by Polish composers in its appearance at the Pavilion of the Music Center Monday night.

For those awaiting ethnic and/or national expressions, however, there was music by and about Hungarians.

Liszt’s A-major Piano Concerto, for instance, followed by an encore played by the soloist, Misha Dichter, in the same composer’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 15 (the “Rakoczy” March). And, to close the program, Bartok’s “Wonderful Mandarin” Suite, that followed by an orchestral encore in Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5.

By that time, many listeners had vacated the premises. For the record, however, it must be stated that the second orchestral encore finally brought something Polish into these proceedings. It was the “Mazur” from the opera “Halka” by Stanislaw Moniuszko.

The lean-sounding, highly accomplished Warsaw ensemble, led on this tour, as it was on its last visit here in 1982, by music director Kazimierz Kord, seemed to perform at a distance from the music on the first half of its program, Monday.

Its playing of Tchaikovsky’s “Francesca da Rimini” at the beginning of the evening displayed abundant musical solidity and strong solo lines, but a certain reticence in dynamics and projection. In the piano concerto, a similar holding-back could be detected, both from the instrumentalists and conductor Kord.

Dichter’s smooth playing on a brittle-sounding piano proved super-efficient in approach, unprobing in its emotional aspects. In response to prolonged applause, however, the pianist offered an immaculate and strikingly virtuosic reading of the Hungarian Rhapsody, one which, as they say, brought down the house.

The orchestra returned after intermission to find and deliver in the Bartok suite the same colors and dynamics that had been missing in its playing before the interval. Here, woodwinds and brass finally flaunted their skills, usually without raucousness, and the string choir operated as a tight musical unit. Even Kord’s exaggerated podium movements could not distract from the purposeful sounds coming off the stage.

Incidentally, the lack of scores by Polish composers on this program will be rectified when the Warsaw Philharmonic visits the Orange County Performing Arts Center at 8 tonight and Saturday543257632be played tonight and his “Livre” on Saturday.