Music and Dance Reviews : Andre Previn Conducts Los Angeles Philharmonic

It was quite a week for Andre Previn and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Amid recording sessions and concert rehearsals, Previn abruptly resigned his position as music director of the orchestra.

Turmoil, however, was not apparent in the performance Friday evening at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The audience greeted Previn’s entrance with more than the regular perfunctory applause, and at the end there were scattered efforts toward a standing ovation. Otherwise, it was business as usual.

Well, not quite as usual. The orchestra played Previn’s French program at the top of its form, with responsive, controlled bravura.

The concerts over the weekend also turned out to be Previn’s last as music director of the orchestra. Monday he announced that he would not conduct the final program of the subscription season this week, due to an arm ailment.

The major effort was the complete ballet music for “Daphnis et Chloe.” In Ravel’s highly perfumed garden, Previn is happy not only to stop and smell the flowers, but to water them as well and do a little weeding along the way.

The result was a voluptuary’s delight, as well as a deferential observance of the structural components of what Ravel called a symphonie choreographique. For those immune to Ravel’s magic, it also seemed as interminable as the Trojan War, and as rife in illusory climaxes and desultory posing.

Previn’s players gave him both the sheer, overwhelming sound one expects in this music and the rare textural clarity and rhythmic definition that distinguishes his interpretation. In that they were heroically seconded by 48 well-drilled members of the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

The chorus also worked renewing wonders in Faure’s Pavane. Common enough in its purely instrumental guise and varied cross-over arrangements, the elegy gained emotional and aural impact with the inclusion of the stately vocal nostalgia.

Philharmonic co-principal oboist David Weiss took the solo honors in Jean Francaix’ “L’Horloge de flore,” a seven-movement suite showing touches of Prokofiev and Gershwin as well as French neo-classicism. Weiss tootled amiably in the deceptively difficult solos, nimble in articulation and unexaggeratedly woody in tone.

Previn balanced the modest matter skillfully, drawing crisp ensemble and fluent solo playing from his down-sized orchestra.