MUSIC REVIEW : Sanderling Leads Witty Philharmonic

It’s a little difficult to imagine Kurt Sanderling on the Letterman show. An evening with the venerable German conductor is usually an occasion to think deeply and aspire nobly.

But it was sheer, unbridled, almost slapstick humor that provided the final spark to his Beethoven program, Friday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Not that there weren’t other sentiments operative during the leisurely, mostly lyrical concert. It began, after all, with the third “Lenore” Overture, though even there the triumphalism was certainly goosed with intimations of titantic laughter.

Sanderling launched the Second Symphony with richly detailed dignity and kept the ensuing Allegro exuberances witty but well-controlled. He sustained the rarefied romance of the slow movement with eloquent clarity and allowed the Scherzo run its chortling course naturally.

In the finale, however, Sandlering dispensed with any pretense toward artificial propriety and let the jokes rip with gusto. In retrospect, the unfettered joy here made the previous movements seem slyly tongue-in-cheek, climaxing in this revelry.

The Philharmonic provided balanced, articulate sound and textures of high definition. What the transparency sometimes revealed was intonation problems, as in the cruelly exposed Larghetto of the Symphony, and a tendency for the woodwinds to get ahead of the strings, manifested immediately at the beginning of the overture.

The finale of the Fourth Piano Concerto is not nearly as ribald as that of the Symphony, but soloist Richard Goode also made a leap from elegant sparkle and introspective passion to athletic glee in his familiar scenario. He brought characteristically polished and pertinent playing to the task, although his left hand intermittently faded from the focus.