Music and Dance Reviews : Rattle Leads L.A. Philharmonic at Music Center

Although the more you think about it, the more natural it seems, programmatic pairings of Mahler and Bartok are not common. Mahler’s Seventh Symphony and Bartok’s Second Piano Concerto are in themselves relative rarities, but Friday evening in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center, Simon Rattle and the Los Angeles Philharmonic made a persuasive case for yoking them.

The protagonist in Bartok was Peter Donohoe, who made his Music Center debut a year ago, also with Rattle conducting. The British pianist dispatched the manifold challenges with focused, fiercely accented athleticism. He also allowed the oppressive, brooding elements full weight, in playing of almost sculptural clarity.

Rattle backed him with very bright, hard-edged sounds in the opening movement, moving to the verge of chill inaudibility in the Adagio. The collaborative journey reached gleaming triumph in the finale.

The ardent response brought Donohoe back out for a fleet encore, Debussy’s Etude No. 6, which Rattle observed perched among the violins.

Like Bartok, Mahler was a master of orchestral chiaroscuro, and his Seventh Symphony resonates with the later composer’s Concerto for Orchestra in many ways, including its formal pattern and emotional progression. Rattle underscored those elements while enforcing a lean, propulsive view of the work, never shy about incisive explosions or lyric tenderness, but never indulgent or wayward.

The orchestra responded with unusual sonic brilliance, occasionally to the point of stridency, acerbated by patches of misintonation from the woodwinds. Byron Peebles’ clarion tenor-horn solos led the way for a brass effort of herculean power and grace.