MUSIC REVIEW : A Program of Contrasts by Philharmonic

David Zinman seldom fails to provoke. The distinguished American conductor, serving as guest on the Los Angeles Philharmonic podium this week, has put together a program of contrasts: pristine Vivaldi, in the only concerto for two cellos that composer ever wrote; Christopher Rouse’s brand-new, strikingly violent Cello Concerto, in its world premiere; and Brahms’ beloved Second Symphony.

At the first of three performances of this agenda Wednesday night in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Zinman coaxed subtle yet firm and motivated playing from the orchestra for the Vivaldi piece--Ronald Leonard and Yo-Yo Ma were the soloists--put the new Rouse work in its best light while collaborating with cellist Ma, and revived Brahms’ arguably most mellow symphonic work with high energy yet controlled exuberance.

Commissioned by Betty Freeman to mark the Philharmonic’s 75th anniversary, the American composer’s new Cello Concerto is in two disparate movements tied together by a cadenza.

In the first half, soloist and ensemble creak, screech and shriek; from the beginning, there is noisy hostility between them. This musical antipathy is not a contest, however, or even a struggle--it is, rather, a steady tugging away from each other.

After a number of engagements, or, if you will, episodes, each ending in, or interrupted by, a hammer-blow climax, the bridging cadenza leads the listener into a quiet but uncomforting finale, one punctuated with “grief-laden” (the composer’s word) and elegiac passages. At the Upbeat Live event prior to the performance, Rouse called the work “depressing,” a word that does not begin to give the flavor of the concerto’s more-than-complex sensibility.

Soloist Ma, his legendary virtuosity at the ready, leaped all technical and musical hurdles as if they were simple knots to be untied. He also seemed to go to the core of the work’s emotional life, a layering of contradictions and subtexts, making sense out of ostensible non sequiturs and creating continuity out of chaos. Zinman and the orchestra operated on the same apparent level of understanding.

The new work, and the positive response from the large audience gathered in the Pavilion on Wednesday, cry out for second, third and subsequent hearings.

This evening began with a minor masterpiece disguised as an overture: Vivaldi’s G-minor Concerto for Two Cellos, as played by Leonard (on first) and Ma. The two soloists matched each other tone for tone, phrase for phrase, and at all dynamic levels; Zinman led the orchestra with an inspired hand.

Some listeners cannot get enough Brahms; for them, this unpressured but joyous reconsideration of the treasured D-major Symphony had to be a treat in terms of mellow sound, persuasive rhetoric and emotional resonance. As he had, last week in Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, hornist Jerry Folsom--among other cherishable orchestral soloists--sang out his solos with a sound of burnished glory.