MUSIC REVIEW : Difficult Debut for Libor Pesek on L.A. Podium

Pity the poor guest conductor.

He pops into town only a couple of days before his first performance, often as not a one-program stand. His mandate is to make beautiful music literally overnight, with clarity, precision and individuality. Never mind that time is limited.

He is left pretty much to his own devices. Unless he happens to be a frequent visitor, he doesn’t know his hosts, their city, its aesthetic perspectives and traditions. He cannot claim even a nodding acquaintance with the strengths and weaknesses of the orchestra, the acoustical quirks of the hall, or the proclivities of the audience. He may not even have met his soloist.

He is unlikely to command automatic authority. Still, the options remain simple: sink or soar.

Libor Pesek, who made his unheralded debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Thursday, certainly didn’t sink. But he didn’t exactly soar, either.

He looks like a consummate professional, the sort of conductor one might be happy to procure from Central Casting. Handsome, grizzled, courtly and a respectable 56, he exudes Old World savoir-faire.

He sculpts phrases meticulously in the air. He manicures graceful melodies. He provides the wonted technical cues and emotive clues, even though the strangers in front of him may not interpret the messages aptly.

Audiences love him, we we told, at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (where he serves as principal conductor). They love him in his native Prague (where he functions as conductor-in-residence).

The audience applauded him politely in Los Angeles, where he made instant music politely. Having inherited a safe, generic program devoted to Mozart and Richard Strauss, he produced safe, generic, often superficial performances.

Actually, Pesek may harbor some really provocative ideas about the repertory at hand. On this difficult occasion, unfortunately, he had to be content with enlightened approximations.

He opened the program, like many a Philharmonic maestro before him, with rough and unready Mozart, in this case the Symphony No. 32, K. 318. The roughness lingered--timpani intonation turned out to be one of the more serious problems--for Strauss’ sometimes bright, sometimes bilious “Burleske.” Emanuel Ax was the basically wild and often splashy soloist.

Ax came right back for Mozart’s A-major Piano Concerto, K. 488, playing with a curious combination of reckless, thumping bravado and nice, sentimental finesse. Pesek and the orchestra followed faithfully, scrambling the rhetoric only in moments of extreme agitation.

After intermission, they turned to the heroic sprawl and beguiling banality of Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra.” Wisely, the conductor concentrated on keeping things moving. Here, the orchestra responded most appreciatively.

It might be interesting to hear what Pesek can do with some of his presumed specialties. He is currently recording all the symphonies of Dvorak. No doubt, he could tell us a few things about the lesser-known Janacek repertory.

Perhaps next time. . . .