Music Reviews : Philadelphia Orchestra Closes Southland Visit

Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra closed their three-day tour of Southern California with another virtually exemplary concert at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

The Thursday program, sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society, included Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony and two works by Ravel, the “Rapsodie espagnole” and “Bolero.”

In Beethoven’s “Eroica,” Muti combined urgency with warmth and discipline with fire. His approach was epic in proportion, sense of architecture and balance. He maintained momentum, though not always consistent tension, and generated moments of electricity and impelled expressivity.

As a stylist, Muti knew to make the most of Beethoven’s sforzando markings and amplified structural weight by taking the repeat of the exposition in the first movement and the initial repeat often ignored in the third.

Still, it was not an ideally profound interpretation. The Funeral March was smoothed and rounded over. Although there were expressive wind solos, the brass were kept down and the result was less than a grief-stricken reading.

The orchestra played with wondrous, full-bodied sound. Of many memorable moments, one stood out: the immaculate precision and articulation of the strings at the start of the Scherzo.

In Ravel’s “Rapsodie,” Muti offered ethereal pianissimos, frail and delicate colors and, alternately, boldness and vigor. The quiet movements seemed less to come to an end than simply to evaporate into the air; and the fortissimo endings were dazzling.

In “Bolero,” the lower strings played pizzicatos so delicately as to make them seem more breathed than sounded; and the wind soloists each offered round, full, edgeless tone and inflected phrasing.

For an encore, Muti led a passionate account of the Overture to Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino.” It was his most fiery, poetic, temperamental effort all evening.

Incidentally, the audience respected the society’s requests in the program booklet to avoid applauding between movements.

The society had decided to insert the note “as a reminder to the audience,” according to a spokeswoman, because at the Vienna Chamber Ensemble concert three weeks ago, the Center audience had broken the mood with applause after each movement.