MUSIC REVIEW : A Damp Opening at the Bowl

The unthinkable happened Tuesday night. It rained at the official, would-be gala opening of the Hollywood Bowl season.

It didn’t pour. No one got drenched.

Still, many of the conspicuous picnickers found themselves brandishing bumbershoots in one hand and Beaujolais in the other. The ever thoughtful management handed out complimentary plastic ponchos to protect a relatively modest audience of 11,312 from the sporadic drizzle.

The stage shell covered the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Nevertheless, the attendant dampness seemed to create some havoc with intonation. Ultimately, Beethoven triumphed over the elements. He always does. But he did not triumph unscathed.

Not all the problems of the evening involved the weather. Lawrence Foster--the efficient, speedy guest-conductor--seemed to find more prose than poetry in an unimaginative program that began with the “Consecration of the House” overture and ended with the Seventh Symphony. The orchestra often sounded rough, even when it managed to play in tune.

The stellar soloist in the “Emperor” Concerto, Andre Watts, served as a late replacement for the indisposed Alfred Brendel.

Still, communal spirits remained dauntlessly blithe. Warm breezes wafted through the wide-open spaces. A rainbow materialized just in time for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” providing a far more comforting image than standard references to bombs bursting in air and rockets’ red glare. Aeronautical intruders stayed away. The updated overamplification system proved reasonably kind, although it favored the piano at the orchestra’s expense. And no one bounced a wine bottle down the concrete steps.

At festive Cahuenga Pass, where the actual music-making has never seemed to be anyone’s top priority, one must be grateful for big favors.

Foster, who has been gracing Philharmonic podia for 27 years, is not the sort of conductor who gets in the composer’s way. He is solid, intelligent, reliable. For better or worse, he specializes in straightforward, no-frills performances--performances free of subjective distortion at one extreme and, perhaps, free of interpretive inspiration at the other.

He encountered some difficulty sustaining tension, not to say momentum, in the tentative “Consecration” overture. He allowed some jerky transitions in the Seventh Symphony, and found little pathos in the funereal second movement. Still, he whipped up considerable excitement, without courting frenzy, in the final allegro, and exerted both authority and civility throughout.

At concerto time, he entered into a curiously cautious collaboration with Watts. One couldn’t always be sure who wanted to follow whom, and why.

The celebrated pianist excelled in the lyrical aspects of the challenge, offering sensitive dynamic nuances in the scale passages, a daring pianissimo in the first cadenza, and a dreamy cantabile exposition of the extended adagio. He tended to muddle the dramatic outbursts, however, sacrificing both accuracy and eloquence in an apparent quest of climactic verve.

Let’s blame the moisture.