MUSIC REVIEW : Fireworks Finale at Bowl

With its wonted pyrotechnic bang and semi-pops program, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s summer season at Hollywood Bowl came to an end this weekend. Friday evening a crowd of 17,444 trooped in, and the Saturday performance reached an even larger audience through a telecast on KCOP, Channel 13.

The Philharmonic kept its finale appropriately an in-house event, with its young assistant conductor David Alan Miller on the podium and concertmaster Alexander Treger the soloist. The results, however, were uneven Friday.

In Wieniawski’s D-minor Violin Concerto, Treger proved an excitable protagonist, charging the bravura hurdles in vigorous rushes. His tone--as delivered through the Bowl speakers with an occasional odd pop--was sweet and firm, and the sentiment sincere, but intonation and cohesion suffered in the virtuoso spasms.

Miller conducted diligently, but somewhat mechanically. The collaboration had its best moments in the alla Zingara finale.

The orchestra as a whole did its best work in Kodaly’s “Dances from Galanta.” Miller elicited character as well as energy, balanced ensemble as well as fluent individual solos, in particular from clarinetist Lorin Levee.

On the other hand, a Suite from Bizet’s “Carmen,” by an unidentified arranger, sounded like mechanical pops fare.

The concert ended, as has become traditional, with an enlarged wind band on stage for some of Handel’s “Music for the Royal Fireworks” in the stylish, tasteful edition of Philharmonic violinist Roy Tanabe. There were many cherishable details in the performance, as well as some wayward moments, all ultimately overwhelmed, of course, by the fireworks.