MUSIC REVIEW : Previn Offers Valedictory Sigh, Rumble

If all had gone as planned, the focal point at this week’s Philharmonic concerts might have been the local debut of Maria Joao Pires. The much-acclaimed Portuguese pianist had been scheduled to play Mozart’s G-major Concerto, K. 453.

Fate had other ideas.

Illness reportedly detained Pires in Paris. This should not have been a disaster. Andre Previn and the local management had, we are told, at least four days to find an appropriate replacement. There is no great scarcity of competent Mozartean pianists in the world today. After an initial scurry, however, they gave up.

Instead of the piano concerto, they opted for a clarinet showpiece--specifically Mozart’s beguiling A-major Concerto. In place of a stellar guest, they assigned the solo duties to Michele Zukovsky, the principal clarinetist of the orchestra.

Zukovsky, as we have long known, is a splendid technician and a careful stylist. She played the long, flowing lines with slender tone and seamless grace, made the flights of filigree seem both easy and organic. Sensitively supported by Previn and the orchestra, she turned the adagio into a poetic sigh, and mustered a nice semblance of perky charm in the rondo finale.

It was all lovely, but the scale was very small. Too small, perhaps, for a hall as big as the 3,200-seat Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. What should have seemed delicate often emerged wispy.

The reticence was short-lived. After intermission, Previn--who is bidding us his seasonal adieu with this oddly balanced program--turned to the sprawling thumps and contrapuntal whomps of Elgar’s Symphony No. 2.

This prim exercise in gnarled pomp and muddled circumstance, written in 1910 as a tribute to Edward VII, attests to the valor of a British brand of romanticism in decay. The harmonic language proves that Wagner and Strauss did not modulate in vain. The orchestration broods darkly and thickly as the rhetoric bloats.

For 55 long minutes, Elgar meanders with portly dignity through a whole catalogue of symphonic rituals, without clarifying many of them. The final climax brings relief, for the wrong reason.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic had ventured this turgidly complex challenge only once before, under Daniel Barenboim in 1972. The performance on Thursday hardly reflected the 19-year hiatus.

Previn, who obviously adores this music, conducted with passion and conviction that sometimes elude him in more conventional challenges. The orchestra responded with uncommon fervor and precision, in depth.

It was dazzling. For those of us who have yet to see Elgar’s light, it also was frustrating.