Music Reviews : Bishop-Kovacevich Leads More Mozart at Bowl

Late August: the season of doldrums at Hollywood Bowl. The parade of guest conductors in two-night stands, limited rehearsal time and the outdoor acoustic begin to take their toll on the L.A. Philharmonic. The orchestra sounds dull, plays roughly.

Not so Thursday night. Pianist-conductor Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich, in his second “MozartFest” appearance this week, led the orchestra in energized and vital and generally neat performances of music by Mozart--with three Philharmonic principals taking on the solo parts in two concertos.

Things started unpropitiously enough. With the downbeat of the “Cosi fan Tutte” Overture came the first airplane, surprisingly to be the last of the evening. The performance proved unindicative as well, an unremarkable run-through with overbalanced timpani and those normally bubbly woodwind scales played with all the verve of warm-up exercises.

Most impressive were the performances after intermission. Jerry Folsom gave a mellow, shaded and purposefully nimble account of the Horn Concerto No. 4, K. 495, with Bishop-Kovacevich lending, by turns, delicate and pointed support.

To conclude, Bishop-Kovacevich offered a cheerful reading of the “Haffner” Symphony, K. 385.

To the ceremonious music of the opening movement he brought brilliance of color and strong accents but never a heavy beat. To the Andante and Minuetto he brought faster-than-expected tempos, yet sculpted phrases in detail, gave roundness to the lyrical passages and avoided primness.

The finale was played with great rhythmic snap, the timpani again strikingly forward, but here the enthusiasm seemed entirely warranted. The strings showed the spirit of country fiddlers, though with fitting Mozart style.

Balance problems hampered the performance of the Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364, with Dale Hikawa Silverman’s viola coming in a distant sonic second to Mark Baranov’s violin.

Hikawa’s approach seemed more subdued than Baranov’s brightly projected reading to begin with, but Bowl amplification was definitely unevenly applied here, the violist fading in and out of the sound picture. Bishop-Kovacevich and company offered an insightful accompaniment, so it wasn’t a total loss.