MUSIC REVIEW : Muti and the Mighty Philadelphians

Name the five finest orchestras in the world. Or in America. Or in California. Or in Eastern Oshkosh.

It is an ever-popular, ever-fatuous parlor game in this country. Americans love ratings.

The only music-oriented pastime more popular--and more fatuous--these days is the ubiquitous name-the-next-conductor game. We can leave that for another occasion.

Suffice it to say this morning that the Philadelphia Orchestra, which opened a three-concert stopover stint in Southern California Tuesday en route to Japan, remains one of the finest orchestras in the world. Period.

And Riccardo Muti is still one of the finest conductors. Period.

The concert, sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society at the Performing Arts Center, offered numerous revelations. After all those sonically muddled local performances by all those not quite first-rate ensembles, Muti and the Philadelphians managed to raise communal spirits and clarify some crucial perspectives. More important, perhaps, the visitors cleansed communal ears.

There is nothing wrong with Segerstrom Hall, we rediscover, that can’t be cured by inspired music-making. Although the acoustic may be awfully bright and awfully reverberant, it can accommodate an onslaught of mighty tone.

Just make that tone slender and precise. Make it neatly focused, elegantly articulated, perfectly balanced. . . .

Muti resembles the sort of conductor who might be dreamed up by Hollywood and dispatched by Central Casting. He is dark, slim, vital, handsome, intrinsically Italian. He exudes brooding intensity and barely disciplined energy.

He can dispense plenty of flash when he wants to. Fortunately, he never indulges in flash for its own vulgar sake.

Audiences always respond to all that. But Muti is more than an instant matinee idol. He happens to be a splendid technician, an intellectual and something of a poet.

He opened the inaugural program here with Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Avoiding any temptation to sentimentalize the already gushing rhetoric, Muti chose brisk tempos and a taut expressive scale.

That did not preclude thoughtful attention to telling inner voices and minute instrumental detail. Tchaikovsky’s passions were, if anything, enhanced by subtle shading and poignant nuance.

A comparable set of interpretive values ennobled Prokofiev’s delineation of the same star-cross’d tragedy at the end of the evening. In 10 excerpts from the “Romeo and Juliet” ballet, Muti reminded us what we miss when this miraculous score is left to bullish pit bands.

Unfettered by the limitations of dancing feet on the stage, he sustained his own scheme of rhythmic flexibility and symphonic grandeur. He enforced his own laws of dramatic propulsion.

The poised Philadelphia strings--now stripped of Ormandy’s plush veneer--shimmered exquisitely. The brass roared meticulously.

The wildest agitation proceeded without the usual scramble. The most brutal climaxes evaded chordal chaos. The theatrical hysteria was impeccably controlled, and doubly effective as a result.

After the ethereal ending of the tomb scene--the horrendous storm having given way to cathartic calm--the audience responded with the ultimate tribute: stunned silence. Then came the inevitable ovation and demands for an encore. Muti obliged with Giuseppe Martucci’s Notturno.

At least one listener, however, did not want to hear more. Prokofiev’s haunting cadence, so perfectly gauged, required no bonus diversion.

The novelty of the evening came with an obligatory gesture before intermission. Vincent Persichetti’s Fifth Symphony (1953) offers a canny challenge to the string section. It reveals a well-crafted exploitation of the single-movement structure and a thoughtful exploration of various academic procedures.

In the cold light of 1989, it also seems dutiful and uneventful. Not even Muti and the mighty Philadelphians could make its complex maneuvers seem compelling.