Music and Dance Reviews : Daniel Lewis Conducts Philharmonic at Bowl

Daniel Lewis has earned a reputation for strong, fresh programming, without much recourse to avant-garde novelties. His agenda for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, at Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday, leavened utter conventionality with a dollop of disconcerting eccentricity.

The kicker on the program was a Trumpet Concerto by one Johann Baptist Georg Neruda, which was sandwiched between Richard Strauss’ “Don Juan” and Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony like a raisin between thick slices of whole-wheat bread. Actually composed for the hunting horn, the slender Italianate Rococo work was arranged and championed by Philharmonic principal Thomas Stevens.

With scant opportunity for bravura bluster, Stevens put the emphasis on sweet sounds and round, legato phrasing. He shaped Neruda’s stock lines with burnished lyricism, tootled blithely and brightly through his own brief cadenzas--though a little flustered by aerial intrusions--and supplied a modest amount of ornamentation.

Lewis led a chamber orchestra of 17 with stylish propriety, and considerably more clipped vigor than Stevens displayed. The differences in articulation between solo and accompaniment created some unstable moments, but genial musicality in all parts generally triumphed.

Since there is no hint of musical nationalism in the Concerto by the Czech Neruda, ethnicity was not the tie that bound it to Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, let alone the tone poem by the Munich master. Lewis, however, did seem to aim at something classically light, brisk and clarified in those pillars of late Romanticism.

The results were appealing, albeit uneven. The approach stressed the exuberance of “Don Juan,” the stylized folkishness of the “New World.” Lewis lingered caressively at some of the obvious points, but there was often a hurried feeling to the performances, a curtailment of the inherent emotions.

The Philharmonic played with polished energy for Lewis, though resisting some of his ideas. Woodwind soloists proved particularly stubborn in their adherence to slower tempos, despite the conductor’s efforts to get them up to his speed, and the tugging made some transitions unduly abrupt. The overall effect, however, was crisp and forthright.

Attendance: 9,319.