MUSIC REVIEW : L.A. Philharmonic a Class Act at Carnegie Hall : Gala: Acoustics of the venerable building impart luster and intensity to centennial opening-night performance.

When Andre Previn and the Los Angeles Philharmonic appeared at Carnegie Hall last spring, New York hardly noticed. It was just one more provincial band in the never-ending parade of orchestras that passes through the nation’s cultural capital. The concert attracted little press attention, no New York Times review.

But when Previn and the Philharmonic returned Wednesday night, Judith Arron, the executive and artistic director of Carnegie, said that her biggest problem was finding enough last-minute seats, at as much as $1,000 each, for VIPs.

Not only were the critics there, but paparazzi made pests of themselves shooting the black-tie audience, and local television stations sent video cameras to get footage for the 11 o’clock news.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic was the attraction for Carnegie Hall’s centennial gala opening night.

But why the Los Angeles Philharmonic and not one of the more glamorous orchestras that will also be appearing during Carnegie’s ultrastellar season? Arron says only that she wanted a major American orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic was available. Others say that it was simply luck of scheduling and Philharmonic managing director Ernest Fleischmann’s famous ability to act quickly and aggressively to take advantage of a situation.

Whatever the reason, though, it was a very big night for the Philharmonic. It was also a surprisingly classy concert that made little concession to an unusually attentive high-society crowd.

The program opened with Beethoven’s “Leonore” No. 3 Overture, which was the first piece played in Carnegie 100 years ago, and then was devoted to two major American works from 1941 (the midpoint in Carnegie’s history). Itzhak Perlman was persuaded to exchange one of his handful of concerto warhorses for Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, and in a particularly gracious gesture Carnegie honored the 80th birthday of William Schuman (who had been the first president of the hall’s major competitor, Lincoln Center) with his Third Symphony.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic always sounds like a different orchestra in Carnegie than it does at home. Part of that is the Carnegie acoustics. The bass instruments have a powerful impact, the brass ring out, the upper strings shine and the winds glow in ways they simply do not in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. And part of it is the Carnegie mystique, which invariably inspires the players to achieve a kind of intensity that no orchestra can maintain during the routine of a regular season.

That intensity was not always consistent at first. In the Beethoven overture, Previn emphasized refinement over dramatic exhilaration, although the orchestra was agile and responsive from the start. And in the Barber concerto, the Philharmonic was prisoner to Perlman, who confused the score’s rapt Romanticism with pat sentimentality and who demonstrated interest primarily in the occasional big moment.

But Previn’s reading of the Schuman symphony rose to real eloquence. A work of rugged American counterpoint exploding out of Baroque forms, the symphony served as a showcase for the Philharmonic both as an orchestra of blazing brilliance and also--in a particularly sensitive account of the central Chorale--of great poetry.

The performance’s effect on the Philharmonic’s New York credibility, however, remains to be seen when the critical reaction to it--and to a second Carnegie program played last night--is in. But NBC News ended its 11 o’clock report with a clip of the concert, which focused entirely on Perlman, without identifying either Previn or the Philharmonic, as if they were just an anonymous background band, accompanying the evening’s real star attraction.

* CELEBRITY PARTY

600 attend a post-performance black-tie celebration at the Metropolitan Club. E2