MUSIC REVIEW : Zinman Leads Baltimore Symphony at Pavilion

Finally, after appearing as guest conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic over a 15-year period, David Zinman stood Sunday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion before his own orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony.

The event didn’t have to represent a milestone in order to qualify as a genuine cause for pride, however, since the Baltimore musicians played with an ensemble smoothness and expressive vigor that would earn approval under any circumstances. Here on their first tour to Los Angeles, they had an able guide in Zinman.

Yet there were times when one had to remember that he has no familiarity with the Pavilion acoustic, having conducted only at Hollywood Bowl. His minor miscalculations, which led to occasionally overpowering brass and percussion in Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, did not affect the first part of the program, though.

In fact, the best-gauged piece was the opener, Berlioz’s showy overture to “Benvenuto Cellini.” There Zinman could capitalize on the prevailing high strings and lucid textures that typify this music. Even more important, he imparted a sense of controlled hysteria within the framework of refined sound--thus delivering the composer’s essence.

But the really daring event of the evening came with soloist Yo-Yo Ma, who played Britten’s difficult and seldom-heard Cello Symphony. Titled so, rather than as a concerto, because it follows symphonic form, the work is hardly the accessible sort of fare touring orchestras like to offer. Indeed, with its brooding agitation, tentative mergings of phrase fragments and sense of hanging in the limbo of anxious doubt, there’s not much audience-pleasing in store until the final movement, which becomes fully tonal and optimistic.

Ma was such a stunning protagonist, however, that he swept aside the score’s tedious stretches. With his purity of tone he captured the exquisite loneliness of the cello voice hovering above the sparse orchestration. He also found the gruff, heroic depths of conflict that abounded. Throughout Zinman provided solid support.

Following intermission Zinman turned to the Tchaikovsky, in a reading that emphasized poise and elegance. While he gave the orchestra its head when the score’s emotional turmoil beckoned, nothing became overwrought. Notwithstanding the misjudged brass, this was a well-laid-out performance with plush, well-modulated sound and niceties in the gracioso passages.