Music Reviews : Mahler and Mozart Program at Hollywood Bowl

Mahler and Mozart have become a popular concert combination in some circles, and in truth, there are connections between the two Austrians beyond the merely alliterative.

At Hollywood Bowl on Thursday evening, however, Edo de Waart’s program emphasized the contrasts inherent in the pairing, contrasts as readily seen as heard. A chamber orchestra contingent of the Los Angeles Philharmonic tackled the Mozart portion, while the full orchestra plus the Philharmonic Institute Orchestra combined for Mahler’s First Symphony.

Pianist Jeffrey Kahane was the hero of the Mozart half, in the D-minor Concerto, K.466, a piece once subject to Mahlerian emotional vehemence in many interpretations. Kahane left no doubts about his own expressive range, but within a structurally and stylistically undistorted context.

Kahane played with direct, purposeful vigor in thundering and singing passages alike. He allowed the Beethoven cadenzas rhapsodically free rein, made the big formal connections and knew when to submerge his part in the orchestral texture and when to overwhelm it.

De Waart provided an accommodating, occasionally brusque, accompaniment. He opened the concert with a quick, crisp dash through the Overture to “Le Nozze di Figaro.”

The conductor seemed at first to have equally blunt ideas about Mahler’s First Symphony, and received little help from his huge cast of instrumentalists. The opening string shimmer frequently shuddered into microtonal clusters, and the end of the movement stuttered awkwardly.

De Waart also left the finale an unshaped indulgence. The middle movements, however, had real beauty and character. De Waart let the gentle rusticism of the scherzo blossom naturally, and gave the third movement equal measures of tragic nobility and sardonic despair.

There his double orchestra cooperated wonderfully, with the institute students taking most of the principal assignments with ready aplomb. The klezmer-influenced portions of the third movement received particular solo brilliance.

Attendance: 12,481.