MUSIC REVIEW : Ashkenazy Conducts Berlin Radio Symphony in Pasadena

Returning to Ambassador Auditorium on Thursday night, the Berlin Radio Symphony, which visited here five years ago, brought its latest chief conductor, Vladimir Ashkenazy, to lead a Brahms/Berg/Scriabin program.

For those podium-watchers who had written Ashkenazy off as an intense but flawed wannabe conductor, this performance offered a chance for reconsideration.

The highly accomplished symphonic ensemble, now in its fifth decade, played this agenda--consisting of Brahms’ “Tragic” Overture, Alban Berg’s Three Pieces, Opus 6, and Scriabin’s Third Symphony--authoritatively, if not immaculately. Moreover, it performed for Ashkenazy with the intensity and commitment one had missed in the Royal Philharmonic’s appearance here, with the conductor, in February, 1989.

The Berliners’ generally raucous and unmodulated sound-profile seemed well under control in the Brahms and Berg pieces, wherein balances between choirs and a mellow transparency underlined Ashkenazy’s admirable probity of concept. He and the orchestra proved to be of one mind about the serious musical business in these works.

One had to be impressed with the overture in particular, for it moved compellingly from first to last, its details illuminated but its thrust undeterred.

And Berg’s sometimes impenetrable Opus 6 showed the Berlin players and their leader--he took over from Riccardo Chailly in September--unintimidated by formal and technical complexities. They achieved complete coherence in a clear performance.

Ashkenazy brought similar singlemindedness, and a pointed musical overview, to the sprawling excesses of Scriabin’s bloated Third Symphony.

Yet here, the ensemble performed with considerably less polish.

Scrappy balances, mechanical raggedness and mediocre solo-playing marked the entire reading. Most of it lacked finesse, much of it became overloud, and orchestral sections seemed to compete with each other for the listener’s attention; balances remained askew. The piece is weak-minded, to be sure. But it needn’t be sloppy.