L.A. Philharmonic Faces the Critics in New York : Music: Performances opening Carnegie Hall’s centennial season are praised and panned.

“Incandescent,” “unpressed grandeur and heart-tugging eloquence,” “sonically ravishing.”

Those are a few of the glowing adjectives you may see quoted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic publicity office to represent the New York reception given the orchestra for its pair of concerts that opened Carnegie Hall’s centennial season last week.

The ones you won’t see are: “dragging,” “lugubrious,” “occasionally untidy” or “prevailingly tame.”

New York is, as you have no doubt been hearing lately, a contentious, dangerous city, with even the safest-seeming places fraught with peril for a visitor.

The L.A. Philharmonic is, of course, no stranger to New York, performing here fairly regularly. But last week’s concerts brought an unusual amount of critical scrutiny. Typically, the orchestra’s New York appearances tend to be in late spring as part of a national tour after the regular Los Angeles season. By then most of the great orchestras in the world have already passed through town, and the Los Angeles orchestra just isn’t news.

But this year it was. The Philharmonic happened to have been invited by Carnegie to open is most gala season ever, and it was flown out, at Carnegie’s expense, for the honor. That alone--since neither the Los Angeles Philharmonic nor its former music director, Andre Previn, are considered exactly gala names in New York--was enough to make some observers suspicious.

Donal Henahan, the crusty chief critic of the New York Times, from whom all the above negatives were quoted, found nothing in the playing distinguishable from “what might be encountered from a visiting orchestra on almost any night during an ordinary Carnegie season.”

Complaining even more about the program--which contained two major American works, Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto and William Schuman’s Third Symphony--than the performances, Henahan summed it up as “a puzzling evening Toscanini himself might have had trouble delivering the audience from somnolence.”

While consensus is an unknown concept in New York, others did find that the Philharmonic--which played, many felt, better than it ever has in New York--and Previn both came away with their reputations considerably enhanced.

Writing for Newsday, Tim Page noted that “the Los Angeles Philharmonic has grown into an excellent ensemble.” Bill Zakariasen, who was responsible for all the raves above, wrote in the Daily News that “the orchestral playing was superb.” The third New York tabloid, the Post, concurred, Susan Elliott finding the orchestra to be “in top form, playing with a richly hued string sound and a solid sense of ensemble.”

What really seemed to win over New York audiences and critics alike was the second program, which Previn ended with a deeply felt and gorgeously played performance of Vaughan Williams’ Fifth Symphony.

Peter Goodman, writing in Newsday, said that Previn gave the Vaughan Williams work a “depth, confidence and patient sense that, come what may, this world will survive.” Allan Kozinn, in the New York Times, praised the playing for a sound that was “smooth and focused, and admirably precise.” And for Zakariasen the performance reached “unforgettable moments in the beatific slow movement.”

Also unanimously enjoyed was a masterly account of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, with Emanuel Ax as soloist. But New Yorkers always need something to fight over, and the premiere of Los Angeles Philharmonic composer-in-residence Steven Stucky’s “Angelus”--the first of a series of new works Carnegie has commissioned to celebrate its anniversary year--provided it.

A piece of otherwise innocuous tintinnabulation, it ends in a spectacular blast of sound that left some complaining of aural pain and others exhilarated.

“It’s impossible to dislike,” enthused Zakariasen, “and at 12 minutes, doesn’t wear out its welcome.”

At the other extreme, Goodman, complained that Stucky “strikes at Carnegie’s greatest acoustical weakness since its renovation. There’s nothing like nine minutes of nonstop, virtually undifferentiated, high-pitched ringing to emphasize the bright, hard sound that can now be induced in Carnegie Hall under certain circumstances.”

The piece lasted, by the way, a little over 10 minutes.