Music Reviews : Foster Conducts the L.A. Philharmonic

Though composed in 1955, Martinu’s “Frescoes of Piero della Francesca” had never made its way before a Los Angeles Philharmonic audience until Thursday. Then it launched a sturdy, many-faceted concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

“Frescoes” is an impressionistic, three-movement tone poem, subjective rather than objective in program. Masterfully scored, it provides all manner of solos for individuals and sectional subsets, as well as massive blocks of concerted sound in a fluid, articulate challenge to any orchestra.

Lawrence Foster and the Philharmonic colored it all in vividly. Foster led a reading precisely defined in rhythmic nuance, yet supple enough to sustain some of Martinu’s hazier passages with a beautifully blurred shimmer.

The other bookend was Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8, apt not as the work of a fellow Czech but of a similarly undervalued master of orchestral color and formal jumbles.

In this case, Foster did not unify the piece tightly, particularly not the rhetorical variety of the first and second movements. The Allegretto danced with poignant grace, however, and the finale was accomplished in warm, seamless exuberance.

The Philharmonic played for Foster with balanced strength. These were high-definition readings, occasionally to the point of harshness but always purposeful and alert.

Between Martinu and Dvorak came Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C minor, K. 491. Yefim Bronfman sculpted it with impressive clarity and contributed short, stylistically pertinent cadenzas of his own.

The accompaniment from Foster and a suitably reduced orchestra proved much warmer than Bronfman’s chill vision. But the effect was not contradictory--rather it gave an expressive cushion to the solo austerity.