Music and Jazz : Temirkanov Illuminates a Solid Russian Program at Pavilion

Conductor Yuri Temirkanov has become a regular guest with the Los Angeles Philharmonic since he made his West Coast debut leading the orchestra in the opening concerts at Hollywood Bowl in 1988. Familiarity, however, has not bred predictability in his case.

Indeed, in some of his recent appearances with the orchestra, Temirkanov seemed to elevate eccentricity to a governing principle. Individual to the point of self-parody, his performances could be peculiar in appearance and slovenly in results.

They were nothing of the sort Friday when Temirkanov returned to the orchestra at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and illuminated a solid Russian program with imaginative power.

At the end of the agenda lay Tchaikovsky’s “Polish” Symphony, his third. Why it remains probably the least popular of the composer’s symphonies was impossible to tell from the glowing, richly textured and strongly shaped performance Temirkanov elicited.

Of course, its five movements do sprawl a bit, and Temirkanov did nothing to shorten the journey. But he discovered so many interesting details, and the Philharmonic worked with such clarity and warmth, that the trip proved memorably refreshing.

Temirkanov took all the tempo options the composer suggested and then some. His manipulations, however, simply massaged the already expressive music into firmly pointed glory.

The orchestra responded with passion and precision, some nagging intonation discrepancies in the woodwinds aside. There was an easy breadth to the big moments and a far rarer depth to the many quiet wonders.

Ensemble values were high all evening, enabling a brilliant measure of interplay in Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, as tricky for the accompanists as it is arduous for the soloist.

For this occasion, the much challenged violinist was the Philharmonic’s resourceful concertmaster, Alexander Treger. He was in his element in the Scherzo and Burlesque, playing with fiery, crisply articulated elan.

His efforts to apply a conventional sort of heroism to the chilly obsessions of the Nocturne resulted in a throbbing excess of vibrato and portamento. He began in much the same way in the Passacaglia, but turned the heat down enough to launch the cadenza from lonely depths, building its extreme tensions with intelligently applied virtuosity.

Temirkanov opened the program with a hushed, dreamy account of Mussorgsky’s Prelude to “Khovanshchina,” all shimmering expectancy, deftly colored in by the orchestra.