MUSIC REVIEW : Violist Ohyama Graduates to Podium

Los Angeles Philharmonic audiences have long admired the work of Heiichiro Ohyama at the stand of the principal violist. Thursday night, they finally got a hint of what he can do on the podium.

Ohyama was appointed assistant conductor of the orchestra--a title he shares with the more visible David Alan Miller--in March, 1987. Since then he has been allowed to conduct a few minor events at Hollywood Bowl. He has played baton stooge for Victor Borge downtown and has led a student program at UCLA. This week’s concerts mark his debut in a regular Music Center subscription program.

The first installment turned out to be rather inconclusive. There can be no denying Ohyama’s taste, dedication, intelligence and energy. He obviously knows the music at hand, knows how he wants it to sound.

The transmission of that knowledge to a stage full of colleagues is, however, no easy matter. Nerves can take their toll. Noble intentions can be compromised by inexperience or a problematic technique.

On this occasion, Ohyama seemed chronically tense. He conducted the surface of the score with relentless diligence, stressing the sweeping upward gesture wherever possible. But he seldom let the music breathe easily, seldom probed for expressive substance.

He did manage to produce and sustain some remarkably rich and vibrant sonorities. He did enforce a sensitive dynamic scheme. Nevertheless, an uncharitable observer had occasional reason to wonder if the orchestra was playing well because of the conducting or in spite of it.

To open the program, Ohyama offered a stately account of Samuel Barber’s First Essay for Orchestra. For his potential piece de resistance, he presided over a big, broad and rather square performance of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 1.

At Mozart time, he provided somewhat listless accompaniment for the redoubtable Emanuel Ax in the “Elvira Madigan” concerto, a.k.a. Kochel No. 467. A fine chamber-music specialist, Ohyama kept the textures transparent and the scale intimate, though he tended to slight propulsion and nuance in the process.

Ax played his solos with wonted crispness, fluidity and grace. He contributed a modest cadenza of his own in the first movement and turned to a faintly romantic one by Rudolf Serkin for the finale. He chose to neutralize the commercialized sentiment of the once-ethereal Andante with steadfast, objective restraint.

The performance was eminently tasteful and clean, also eminently impersonal. After all these years of overexposure to the C-major Concerto, not to mention pop distortions of it, one still could long for a little more charm and a little more warmth. A few more sighs and whispers would not have been amiss either.