MUSIC REVIEW : Philharmonic Plays Repertory Standards at Bowl

Staples of Hollywood Bowl repertory, lo these seven decades, Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto and Richard Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra,” reappeared on the penultimate program conducted by Neeme Jarvi, Thursday night in Cahuenga Pass.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic again brought to both works its considerable capabilities, its various soloists strutting their instrumental virtues within tasteful bounds, its choirs maintaining equable balances, its sound resources consistently on display.

Strauss’ Nietzschean tone poem, a specialty of this band since the heyday of Zubin Mehta in the 1960s, made its usual impact under Jarvi--who is, one realizes, actually 13 months younger than the 54-year-old Mehta.

The Estonian conductor does not put on the podium show his Bombay-born colleague used to, but then, few do. In any case, the results he achieved with our orchestra on Thursday, before an audience of 8,672, were admirable: linear in design, apprehensible of statement, neatly executed. The piece can be tawdry; this time around, it persuaded.

Stephen Hough, the deservedly acclaimed British pianist, made an authoritative claim on the rigors of the D-minor Concerto. Strength, clarity, lightness and a Rachmaninovian ease proved to be his in abundance, and he spelled out the emotional progress of the piece compellingly.

One regretted only Hough’s monochromatic palette at the piano. His fine sense of articulation and timing is not matched by his arsenal of touches. As a result, his playing lacks the ultimate faceting and vividness.