Music Reviews : Zinman Leads Russian Program at Hollywood Bowl

In the same way the Los Angeles Philharmonic had renewed its credentials as a Ravel orchestra earlier in the week, so did it prove again Thursday night in Hollywood Bowl what an expert band it remains in music of Russian composers.

David Zinman, the largely unsung American conductor of wide and deep accomplishment, was the instigator of this exemplary demonstration, in a program listing Mussorgsky’s Prelude to “Khovanshchina,” the Second Piano Concerto by Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2.

To all three works Zinman brought a clear sense of structure and line, plus intense but never finicky detailing. Our Philharmonic responded with admirable soloism, exact balances and a handsome palette of sounds.

The Tchaikovsky work became at once compelling in its rhetoric and natural in its tone of conversation. A strong arch of thought seemed to connect the movements, and there was at the end a real sense of resolution. Among many others, hornist Jerry Folsom distinguished himself. The Mussorgsky piece, too, found the orchestra in fine voice and high mettle.

At midprogram, however, a weak link emerged in this event (heard, it is reported, by an audience of 10,761). It was a half-realized, competent and unremarkable run-through of Rachmaninoff’s familiar C-minor Concerto by Yefim Bronfman.

A familiar figure on local stages since his Philharmonic debut in 1977, Bronfman this time around did not justify his engagement; he showed no compelling personal identification with the composer or the piece, raised no musical temperatures and failed to remind us why we love this music.