L.A. Philharmonic Gets Cool Reception in New York

Visiting orchestras, like all tourists to New York, have to watch their step. This is a treacherous city.

The foremost obstacle is likely to be acoustical. The two main symphony halls, Avery Fisher and Carnegie, are both bright and brilliant--places where every small detail of ensemble is exposed, and where tone can easily turn harsh. Carnegie especially is an acoustical mine field for any musician who has not performed on its stage since its renovation last year.

Then there is the competition. All season long the world’s great orchestras, one after another, parade their wares, bent upon demonstrating what they can do best. It takes something really extraordinary--in playing, in interpretation and in choice of repertory--to attract critical attention, although audiences here can be as fickle about hearing unfamiliar music as they are everywhere else.

Last week, for its first appearance in New York in two years, the the Los Angeles Philharmonic brought two separate programs to Carnegie and a third to Fisher. The response was less than ecstatic.

Critical interest was generated mainly by novelties--the New York premiere of Andre Previn’s Piano Concerto and the first performance here in some 40 years of Harold Shapero’s Symphony for Classical Orchestra.

The Philharmonic, which has been here only once before under Previn, is still something fresh. Nonetheless, the combination was not enough to sell out Carnegie. On Thursday the orchestra’s first program, which consisted of Dvorak’s Seventh and Walton’s First symphonies, was the only concert without a soloist. It attracted the smallest crowd and received only two reviews (the city has four major papers). But at least for Peter Goodman, a staff reviewer at Newsday, this was “a feast for the ears, and much of the time, for the mind as well.”

In the Dvorak he described “a comfortable, velvety blanket of sound that brought back memories of how Carnegie Hall used to cushion all the ensembles that played in it.” Then, noting how, since its renovation, Carnegie “can expose weakness and harshness with little mercy,” he concluded that “any orchestra that sounds as good as the Los Angeles did Thursday has earned it.”

But if Goodman’s review will keep the Philharmonic’s Xerox machines flashing for a long time, there was also a curt dismissal of the whole thing from the Post. Randy Banner accused Previn of being a conductor who, in his “quest for aural beauty . . . overlooks crucial elements of compositional style and technique.” She also complained of sloppy entrances and of phrasing that often lacked definition. The audience, too, seemed somewhat unimpressed. There were as many intermission defections as one typically encounters at the Los Angeles Music Center, although those who stayed cheered loudly.

The Philharmonic’s sound under Previn seemed to disturb John Rockwell of the New York Times as well. (Donal Henahan, the Times’ chief music critic, did not cover any of the Philharmonic programs.) At Friday’s concert in Fisher, where Previn’s Piano Concerto was played along with Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony, Rockwell wrote that everything sounded “thick and clotted, in this most crystal-clear of halls, no less.”

He concluded that Previn “through some dubious alchemy, has transformed a very American orchestra into an English one. The winds and brass in the Mendelssohn sounded lovely, but it was the massed string playing that seemed gritty and ill-tuned, in the best British manner.”

As for Previn’s concerto, in which Vladimir Ashkenazy was soloist, Rockwell was disappointed that Previn, given his background in Hollywood and jazz along with classical music, had not attempted a stimulating sort of crossover work. After praising Previn’s writing for Ashkenazy and his mastery of the orchestra, he concluded that “the overall effect was bland, lacking even the bold courage of its conservatism.”

The Post once more assumed a dismissive tone: Heidi Waleson wrote that “John Harbison’s program note was more interesting than the music it described.”

Saturday evening, the Philharmonic was back in Carnegie for a concert that packed the hall, primarily, no doubt, because Vladimir Feltsman was on hand to play Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto, but also because of a genuine curiosity about Shapero’s work.

Both Tim Page, chief critic at Newsday, and the Times’ Bernard Holland found the symphony interesting but neither overly praised the Philharmonic’s playing. Holland said he “would gladly have exchanged the soft fuzzy blanket of sound for clearer articulation.” Page called the Philharmonic “a good second-tier orchestra” and sensed that “all the ingredients are there,” with “excellent first-desk players, decent ensemble work among the sections,” but, under Previn, “the orchestra still seems less impressive than the sum of its parts.”

One lasting impression the Philharmonic may have made was by bringing its “Upbeat Live” preconcert program to Carnegie. A preview of the Shapero symphony by the composer, Previn, John Harbison, Ernest Fleischmann and Ara Guzelimian attracted a positive response from patrons, and Carnegie is considering trying something like it again.