Music Reviews : Leinsdorf Leads L.A. Philharmonic at Pavilion

For his second week with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Erich Leinsdorf turned to a program more suggestive of Hollywood Bowl than the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Though well-executed for the most part, his quartet of opera medleys Thursday proved uneven in impact and interest.

Leinsdorf saved his most expressive, passionate effort for the end, on behalf of his own arrangement of “Der Rosenkavalier” excerpts. He also had a strong, if one-sided, apologia inserted into the program books, arguing the case for symphonic arrangements in general as well as for his own versions in preference to arrangements even by the composer.

In this case, though, the music was its own best defense. His concoction--composed mostly of the Acts I and III preludes and two waltzes--held together nicely, making a surprisingly effective tone-poem summary. The need for such a thing and its contextual rape of the opera was not entirely obvious, but for the concert moment, it worked.

So too did the performance, despite Leinsdorf’s laissez-faire guidance. Throughout the evening he most often could be found in hunched scrutiny of the score, or pumping his arms in podium calisthenics, accompanied by explosively hissing breathing.

In the process, he somehow worked clarifying magic on so heroically clotted a score as Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler” Symphony. There was some indecision about entrances, but the orchestra played grandly in the main, producing big, balanced and detailed sounds.

Ironically, less dense music came off much less effectively. The second suite from “Carmen” held a large measure of seductiveness only through the vitality of the Philharmonic playing, headed in zesty, characterful solos by trumpet Thomas Stevens, flute Anne Diener Giles, piccolo Miles Zentner and concertmaster Sidney Weiss.

Shostakovich’s bland arrangement of excerpts from “Khovanshchina” made poor Mussorgsky sound like Borodin without the passion or opulence. Leinsdorf’s square approach did nothing to advance the cause.