MUSIC REVIEW : Yuri Simonov in Bowl Debut

An appreciative audience officially tabulated at 11,205 encountered good news and bad news at Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday.

The good news? The management had managed to engage Yuri Simonov, one of the finest conductors in the Soviet Union, to make his U.S. orchestral debut replacing Andre Previn on the podium.

The bad news? Simonov had to make do with a strange repertory grab-bag selected by and for our hastily departed music director.

The first half of the program posed no special problems. Resplendent in the Old-World formality of black tails rather than the usual New-World casualness of a white dinner-jacket, Simonov opened the festivities with the most dramatic reading of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in memory. Lending new meaning to the concept of perestroika , our Soviet guest whipped through our national anthem as if lives were at stake.

Next he dispatched Tchaikovsky’s “Marche Slave” with passion that verged on frenzy. He all but dared the Los Angeles Philharmonic not to follow his precisely manicured urgings.

Then he provided a fast and fluent, decidedly unsentimental though subtly nuanced orchestral frame for Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto. He may have unnerved Jeffrey Kahane in the process, for the talented young soloist gave a performance more notable for introspection than for accuracy or fluency. Still, this was Simonov on musical terra firma .

The terra proved far less firma after intermission. Simonov tried desperately, touchingly, to validate the all-American charms and rigors of “Appalachian Spring.” Unfortunately, the gift to be simple with Copland eluded him.

Finally, in the supreme vulgarity of Ravel’s “La Valse,” Simonov mistook soulful brio for Gallic glitter. His reading had undeniable sweep and splashy color in its favor, but not the wonted refinement of line and subtlety of inflection.

This simply was a case of heroic miscasting, the obvious troubles compounded by insufficient rehearsal. Simonov is capable of musical marvels. Anyone who heard him conduct the Bolshoi Opera at the Met in 1975 knows that.

No matter. There still is hope. Tonight--same time, same place--he will turn to standard challenges of Beethoven and Mendelssohn plus a mighty matter of native honor: Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique.”