MUSIC

The Phil in London: The Los Angeles Philharmonic played Anton Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony in London “in a leisurely way, but that had its advantages,” the Times of London reported Thursday after a concert in Royal Festival Hall the night before. “For instance, it allows time for the contemplation of beauty, and the L.A. Phil has plenty,” music critic Richard Morrison wrote. Christopher Grier in London’s Evening Standard said conductor Kurt Sanderling’s leisurely pastoral promenade in the Bruckner work endorsed the orchestra’s “capacity for sustained really quiet playing. . . . Unlike some of its almost narcissistic rivals, this admirable orchestra is down-to-earth functional, seemingly as interested in what it plays as the noise it makes,” Grier said.