MUSIC REVIEW : Tchaikovsky Spectacular at the Bowl

Fireworks and Tchaikovsky are seldom in short supply at Hollywood Bowl. The annual concerts cum conflagrations combining those perennial attractions remain major dates on the summer calendar, however, and this year’s edition of the Tchaikovsky Spectacular did not fail to sell out the amphitheater Friday and Saturday.

Host duties fell to Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Berlin Radio Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic being in Salzburg this month. Capping a week in residence at the Bowl, the Berliners again proved an ensemble of inconsistent virtues.

The need to preserve the “1812” Overture for the traditional finale turned the program upside down, beginning with the Symphony No. 4. Ashkenazy did not linger over the portentous blandishments of the Fate motive and instead drew out the myriad songs and dances that lurk in the score, in a strong, firmly pointed interpretation.

Execution did not always seem to match conception, particularly in the Scherzo. The orchestral waywardness at times suggested sight reading, but the same players who botched one phrase could make a resonant and supple delight of the next.

For solo honors in the B-flat minor Piano Concerto, they brought in a certified Tchaikovskian--Boris Berezovsky, first prize winner of the 1990 Tchaikovsky Competition. He made a marked impression with a bold and kinetic reading.

Some passages were surprisingly far from note-perfect, but Berezovsky seemed to get everything possible out of the instrument at hand. There was a well-defined but very smooth spring to his big chordal efforts, quicksilver grace to the breathless passagework and nicely shaded color in the lyric introspection.

Ashkenazy and the Berliners covered him up at times, such as the opening of the Andante. They respected his mercurial tempo instincts, however, delivering a complementary rather than competitive degree of impetuosity in the outer movements.

They also supplied solid work in the “1812,” although the audience always provides its own measure of suspense in the form of pyrotechnic anticipations. Came the moment, the USC Trojan Marching Band helped inflate the Czarist triumph with booming tones, miniature cutout Moscows burned cheerfully on either side of the shell, and the sky flared and smoked in the wonted spectacle.