Music Reviews : Lewis Leads Institute Orchestra at Bowl

The Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute Orchestra in 1988 is an assured, responsive band. With a shakedown concert at Royce Hall under its collective belt, it plays for its shifting cast of conductors with cohesive aplomb.

Those qualities were very much needed Sunday evening, when the Institute Orchestra ventured outdoors at Hollywood Bowl. The unfriendly skies of Cahuenga Pass did their worst in the way of overflight interruptions, annihilating the beginnings of both Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, and many other crucial points.

Airplanes and helicopters aside, the Bartok emerged handsomely. Daniel Lewis kept the piece light and forward-looking, finding lyric tenderness but no great pathos in the Elegy. Lewis’ balanced, kinetic approach did not preclude strength or feeling, but his was a notably musical, as opposed to emotive, interpretation.

The young musicians of the Institute Orchestra responded to his ministrations with controlled exuberance and sophistication. Some of the softer transitional passages of the first movement did not survive the journey across the Bowl expanses, but what the new sound system delivered sounded confident and relatively polished.

The virtues of the developing Bowl amplification are real, but the hands on the knobs still boost soloists into exaggerated dominance. If the system could be believed, pianist Gary Graffman’s left hand overwhelmed the orchestra with hard-edged thunder in Ravel’s Concerto, while offering little competition to the aerial menace that buried the solo entrance.

If bravura brilliance was Graffman’s goal, it was certainly attained, along with a degree of reflective subtext. Except for the unnatural balances, his effort was both neatly and expressively seconded by the orchestra, under the active leadership of institute conducting fellow Kirk Muspratt.

Another institute fellow, Stefan Sanderling--the son of frequent Philharmonic guest conductor Kurt Sanderling--opened the proceedings with an unexceptional account of the “Meistersinger” Prelude.

Attendance: 6,692.