MUSIC REVIEW : Perick, Norman Reunite at Philharmonic Opening

It didn’t look like an opening, Thursday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Only the press release gushed the dreaded G-word ( gala ). There was nary a black tie, much less a tiara, in sight. No posies lined the stage apron. The melodic trials of “The Star-Spangled Banner” were not attempted. The champagne cup did not runneth over. This, obviously, was just another symphonic show.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic inaugurated its 73rd season with the same protagonists and most of the same program heard with the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Hall week. The event may, in some respects, have resembled a prefabricated concert. At least it was a good prefabricated concert.

Christof Perick, a seasoned German maestro and incipient boss of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, served as energetic guest-conductor. Esa-Pekka Salonen, our official music-director designate, isn’t scheduled to hit town until February.

Jessye Norman exuded superdiva manners and matching mannerisms as she brought down the house--a house not filled to capacity--with expansive showpieces of Beethoven and Wagner. Gala or not, this was no night for expressive restraint.

The Philharmonic, hardly rested from its travails at Hollywood Bowl, failed to get through its evening of heavyweight exertions unscathed. One noted as few technical accidents (pardonable, in context) amid passing signs of hasty preparation. Still, our orchestra played with degrees of cohesion and sonic brilliance that far outshone the comparable efforts in San Francisco, and with superior dramatic force, too.

In San Francisco, Perick had begun the program with some of Mendelssohn’s incidental music for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The gossamer whimsy, rather ploddingly executed, set the scene awkwardly for the raging pathos of Beethoven’s “Ah! perfido” and the climactic passions of Wagner’s “Gotterdammerung,” which followed.

In Los Angeles, the conductor opted instead--wisely, it would seem--for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. This gave the program an unbroken aura of Germanic nobility, not to mention a comforting sense of unity.

Perick’s Beethoven, taut and speedy, apparently owes more to Toscanini than to Furtwangler. It was crisply, even elegantly articulated by the unfazed Philharmonic, however, and one had to admire the conductor’s authoritative brio.

Looking glamorous in the wake of heroic weight loss, Norman struck statuesque poses and emoted broadly in “Ah! perfido.” She mustered huge, dark, massive waves of tone in the middle range but, as usual, paid for her generosity with high climaxes that sounded both thin and strained.

At Wagner time, Perick offered nicely nuanced, carefully balanced, properly propulsive accounts of the orchestral passages known as “Dawn,” the “Rhine Journey” and “Siegfried’s Funeral Music.” Unlike some famous predecessors, he made no effort to artificially stitch these unrelated excerpts together, and deserves credit for his operatic integrity.

In Brunnhilde’s “Immolation” scene, Los Angeles heard what had been missing at that weird Hollywood Bowl concert in July: Brunnhilde’s voice. Norman provided it with fervor and warmth, self-indulgence and histrionic excess.

In the final ascending climaxes, the soprano--who has never dared venture this demanding role in an opera house--again courted vocal disaster. One wonders how long her extraordinary resources can withstand such pressure, and one worries.

Dashing to the exit as soon as Wagner completed his ode to universal redemption through love, one sophisticate was overheard uttering a reasonable verdict:

“Well, she’s no Flagstad.”

Indeed, Norman is no Flagstad. She isn’t even a Traubel, and hardly anyone these days knows the Traubel we’ve seen.