ADLER PLAYS HARMONICA WITH L.A. PHILHARMONIC

Question: When does “Pictures at an Exhibition,” tiresomely ever present at Hollywood Bowl, come as a relief?

Answer: When it follows 25 minutes of solo harmonica playing, as it did Thursday night, courtesy of Larry Adler.

Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with the mouth organ--in cabaret music or sea chanteys. But on a Los Angeles Philharmonic program, midweek, presumably before the pops slot, such scheduling leaves a lot to be desired.

For one thing, the instrument doesn’t have a customary place in the symphonic literature, any more than the spoon or the musical saw does. And, not surprisingly, two of Adler’s solos--Arthur Benjamin’s Harmonica Concerto and Vaughan Williams’ Romances--are no more than innocuous items written expressly for the 73-year-old virtuoso.

Furthermore, when Adler pressed beyond the instrument’s capabilities, as the music required him to do, his sound turned squally. Matters improved somewhat with Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances--at least the idiom proved a better match for the harmonica.

Hugh Wolff, the conductor who inherited this odd assignment, dutifully attended to the task at hand. And the orchestra, plodding through its penultimate program of the summer, responded sympathetically.

To open and close there was programmatic music--excerpts from Berlioz’s “Romeo et Juliette” Symphony and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures”--performed with pleasing but not more than workmanlike results.

Attendance: 8,725.