MUSIC REVIEW : Seattle Orchestra in Hollywood Bowl Debut

Even in the eighth week of a 69th summer season, new things can happen at Hollywood Bowl. Thursday, the new things were a major American orchestra making its Bowl debut, the return to Cahuenga Pass--after eight years--of Gerard Schwarz and the first Bowl audition of Howard Hanson’s Sixth Symphony.

Not to waffle, one must say immediately that all three elements in this superior performance, given before an audience counted at 10,961, lived up to expectations.

In the outdoor setting of the Bowl, the Seattle orchestra’s sound, encountered in recent history only in two concerts at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in January, 1988, seems as warm, rich and cohesive as at that earlier visit.

Clearly, from this accomplished band of musicians, virtuoso abilities do not produce stridency or overplaying. Instead, strong ensemble values, mellow brilliance and effortless balances prevail most of the time. Throughout the program--listing, besides the Hanson work, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony--the orchestra made authoritative sounds, delivered stylish details and generated enthusiastic performances.

Most enthusiastic, perhaps, was the brash, none-too-subtle reading of the piano concerto, in which Alexander Toradze was the soloist.

Bearlike in his approach, Toradze played the familiar work with an irrepressible appreciation of its aggressive qualities, with some recurring nods in the direction of its lyric elements. But nuances of pianistic color--which some great specialists have brought to this work--are not Toradze’s forte; his strong suit is excitement, a quality in which this performance, seconded handily by the orchestra, excelled.

If not highly individual, Schwarz’s account of Beethoven’s Fifth delivered the work’s dynamism and contrasts convincingly. Where some conductors treat the outer movements as do-or-die affairs, Schwarz gave them their dramatic due within Classical restraints. And one could luxuriate in his long-lined, well-spoken reading of the Andante con moto.

Hanson’s neglected penultimate symphony, a product of 1967, is a handsome artifact of many charms and no novelty. In harmony and style, it might have been written 25 years before it was; indeed, a quarter-century earlier, it might have served as a particularly successful score in tandem with an appropriate, short film. The Seattle ensemble, coached effectively by Schwarz, made it highly persuasive for the 18 minutes it occupies.