MUSIC REVIEW : Mehta in Return L.A. Visit

Six weeks into its 1992-93 season, the Los Angeles Philharmonic reaches its first hiatus in the new music directorship of Esa-Pekka Salonen.

The hiatus commences with a two-week visit by guest conductor Zubin Mehta, who held Salonen’s post from 1962 to 1978. Thursday night, in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center, Mehta’s first program offered two works by Tchaikovsky, the Violin Concerto and the Sixth Symphony.

Both are, of course, longtime specialties of the Bombay-born musician. On this occasion, his expertise was not in question; nor was his authority.

The more successful performance came in the concerto, which introduced to Philharmonic subscribers the much heralded young violinist from Novosibirsk, West Siberia, Maxim Vengerov. Vengerov played the same Tchaikovsky Concerto at his local debut in April, with the Moscow Philharmonic in Orange County. At that time he was only 17.

The violinist’s approach to the multiple challenges in the legendary test-piece remains the same: He plays it easily, effortlessly, with a plangent tone, a generous spirit and surprising individuality.

The work seems to hold no terrors for the dignified young musician (who now lives in Israel); Vengerov leaps all technical hurdles with aplomb, lets all the big tunes sing out, and even savors articulating the intricacies of the cadenza.

What his budding career holds in the coming months or years, no one can tell for sure, but at this moment he is a genuine phenomenon: musical, accomplished, brilliant and unaffected.

Mehta and the Philharmonic-- what a pleasure to hear this piece indoors, reverberating off of wood, and from genuine back walls--supplied an affectionate, stylish and handsomely calibrated collaboration; to call it accompaniment would be to deny the relish with which these colleagues brought it to life.

Afterward, and in response to considerable hubbub from the audience, Vengerov played an encore: the Sarabanda from Bach’s D-minor Partita.

Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique” Symphony lacked the emotional exuberance and mechanical neatness that had distinguished the concerto, but, in the outer movements at least, conductor Mehta and the orchestra proved to be in sync regarding the impassioned nature of the piece, and in firm control of its climactic points.

The famous Allegro con grazia seemed to need a lighter touch, as well as deeper contrasts, than it got.

And the aggression that ought to motivate the third movement emerged more bravado than exhilaration, a needed--but not here provided--respite from depression. Less than immaculate instrumentalism, not to mention undifferentiated loudness and momentary overplaying in the winds, also kept the movement earthbound.