MUSIC REVIEW : Philharmonic on Autopilot

Someone must have decreed that Tuesday was the night for Mike Morgan trials under the cool, hazy and noisy skies of Los Angeles.

At Dodger Stadium, before a large crowd of 48,925, a pitcher of that name struggled against a team called the Phillies, allowing 8 hits in 5 2/3 nervous innings. Despite some troubling vicissitudes, the Dodgers eventually won in the 10th.

Meanwhile, at Hollywood Bowl, before an alarmingly small crowd of 7,881, a conductor named Michael Morgan struggled to make an impact on a team called the Phil--a.k.a. Los Angeles Philharmonic--in a program of great hackneyed hits. Despite some troubling vicissitudes, the Phil eventually won, after a fashion, with Mendelssohn’s Third.

The Dodgers’ Morgan, 31, is a seasoned pro on the mound. The same cannot be said for his 35-year-old counterpart on the podium.

Michael Morgan, who served as an early replacement for the ailing Stuart Challender at the Bowl, is still something of a rookie. He was recently appointed music director of the Oakland East Bay Symphony, and is assistant conductor at the Chicago Symphony. This week’s concerts represent his first engagement with the Philharmonic.

Bowl debuts are always problematic. Rehearsal time is severely limited. Performances in the 18,000-seat amphitheater are plagued with extra-musical distractions and sonic distortions. Still, some novices do manage to triumph over automatic adversity in Cahuenga Pass.

If Morgan didn’t exactly triumph, he didn’t exactly fail either. He lost neither nerve nor control. He commands a precise, energetic beat. He leaves little to chance, even with an orchestra that probably knows the scores better than he does.

He served notice that he is a competent technician. Unfortunately, he didn’t go much further.

If he has strong feelings or original ideas about Richard Strauss’ “Don Juan,” Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto or Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony, he kept those feelings and ideas to himself. If he cares much about subtle interpretive details, he gave little indication of it.

He played virtually everything loud, clean and fast. Sometimes, the Philharmonic actually seemed to be phrasing with suavity and sensitivity in spite of his primitive urgings.

In the adagio of the Mendelssohn symphony, he finally began to relax, suggesting that expressive values can compete with metronomic propulsion. But it was little, and it was late.

The soloist in the noble Beethoven concerto was Misha Dichter, a popular and frequent visitor at the Bowl since his debut here 24 summers ago. Possibly hampered by Morgan’s stiff, prosaic accompaniment, the pianist seemed to settle for mechanical agitation in the outer movements. There was nothing perfunctory, however, about his delicate yet rhapsodic treatment of the introspective adagio--a clue as to what might, and should, have been.