MUSIC REVIEW : Slatkin and Gutierrez at Bowl

The rites of summer at Hollywood Bowl continued their pleasant course Tuesday evening. The Los Angeles Philharmonic and pianist Horacio Gutierrez, with Leonard Slatkin presiding, offered up some familiar Beethoven and Stravinsky before 10,887 devotees of the alfresco muse.

“Le Sacre du Printemps” has been more earthy and more austere, more compressed and more expansive than in Slatkin’s version, but seldom more colorful or ultimately galvanic. The conductor set a deliberate, sometimes cautious, pace, looking for lyricism as much as pounding primitivism. He valued the passages of nervous brooding and depressed exhaustion as much the orgiastic explosions.

Occasionally, the effort could barely be heard, but when the time came for sonic violence, Slatkin indulged wholeheartedly. He allowed a greater than usual appearance of chaos, which undercut the sense of remorseless destiny but enhanced the raucous hysteria of the proceedings.

The Philharmonic played stalwartly for Slatkin, brightly blaring when unleashed, murmurous and sullenly glowing when restrained. The solo assignments were typically dispatched with understated poise.

Gutierrez brought similar control and a light, affectionate Romanticism to the program’s main solo vehicle, Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. He played nimbly and neatly when yoked with the orchestra, generally gently and freely in the unaccompanied passages.

He too could thunder when necessary, but even the leaping exuberance of the rondo was more notable for brio and grace than extrovert muscularity. He strode into the final cadenza (Beethoven’s), though, with clipped vigor, and drove eagerly and powerfully to the end.

Slatkin & Co. accompanied respectfully, though with considerable intramural tugging at times, particularly in the first movement. Neither conductor nor soloist seemed much inspired by period performance practices, but the results of their collaboration had an airy appropriateness.

The concert began with an eccentric “Egmont” Overture, very slow and weakly defined in the introduction, and with inner voices repressed into inaudibility.