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Music : Previn’s Mozart

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Months before the Mozart year of 1991 began, management at the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced that the orchestra’s celebrations of this anniversary year of the composer’s death would be appropriate but selective: no long surveys or complete cycles or exhausting marathons.

Now that the year is in progress, that promise begins to be fulfilled. Friday night, at the first of three performances of the inaugural Mozart program of the season, guest conductor Andre Previn led an agenda encompassing the Divertimento in D, K.251, the Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola and the Symphony No. 39.

If the occasion did not become festive--in a time of war and pestilence, that may not be possible--it certainly turned out deeply satisfying.

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Some of us may have forgotten what a thorough and ingratiating Mozartean Previn is--this ebullient and probing performance should have been a reminder.

In all three works, the 61-year-old former Philharmonic music director and his colleagues accomplished buoyant, well-plotted, energetic and transparent readings. Yet in no moment did these performances emerge forced or brittle.

Technical reliability and stylishness characterized the reduced orchestra’s playing throughout; mechanical precision, clear balances and untroubled intonation became predictable. Previn provided flexible tempos that underlined expressivity; for mobility, he offered drive, for articulation, gentle restraint.

Because its stoic profile is so easily blemished, the E-flat Symphony seemed particularly grandiose: sculpted, well-spoken, rich in contrasts. Previn & Co. achieved the lightening of severity, which seems to take over in the final movements, without apparent changing of gears or abruptness.

The emotionally resounding pleasures in the D-major Divertimento found equal fulfillment in Previn’s faceted reading, one of comprehensive but never finicky detail.

Violinist Young Uck Kim and violist Heiichiro Ohyama (the outgoing Philharmonic principal violist) were the resourceful protagonists in the Sinfonia Concertante. From the beginning, the soloists gave notice that this was to be no dutiful run-through of music already overfamiliar. A sense of rediscovered affection blanketed the performance.

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A bright tempo and an optimistic mood in the opening movement, pervasive melancholy in the Andante, and genuine good humor in the finale restored the work for jaded sensibilities. It could not have been as easy as all collaborators made it seem.

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