MUSIC REVIEW : Nelson Conducts Berlioz, Ravel, Tchaikovsky at Bowl

Beginning the final week of the summer season at Hollywood Bowl with yet another guest conductor, the players of the Los Angeles Philharmonic seemed, paradoxically, more relaxed, more malleable and more cooperative than one might expect.

For his second Bowl appearance, however, John Nelson made wonderful music Tuesday night with our overworked but willing orchestra--before a crowd counted by management at 9,293 listeners.

He elicited from the Philharmonic tight performances, splendid soloism and cohesive ensemble playing.

The American conductor, now 48 and a free-lancer tied only to Opera Theatre of St. Louis, led an unremarkable program--Berlioz’s “Benvenuto Cellini” Overture, Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony--with heat and conviction, as if each of these pieces had suddenly become a matter of life and death.

And so they had, apparently. Tchaikovsky’s overfamiliar Fifth moved along unhurriedly, but with an urgency and thrust few achieve. Its opening and finale made their rhetorical points without overstatement or dutifulness, but in all seriousness, and with immaculate instrumentalism.

The inner movements became occasions for genuine articulation but no grandstanding.

And there was no letdown at midprogram, when the brilliant Jean-Yves Thibaudet returned to play the Ravel concerto.

At his first appearance in Southern California at a recital at Ambassador Auditorium eight years ago, the French pianist performed a Ravel group Albert Goldberg called “exquisite.” Thibaudet’s Ravel continues to earn that description. In the G-major concerto, he sculpted every 16th-note, colored every phrase to fit within his ideal conception of the piece, and made it all seem natural and effortless, as well as thrilling.