MUSIC REVIEW : Vengerov in Youth Symphony Benefit

For a moment there was the promise of hearing a distinct and deeply personal interpretation of some standard repertory at the 29th Annual Gala Benefit Concert for the American Youth Symphony on Sunday in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The moment passed, but it left its mark.

Playing the “Reynier” Stradivarius of 1727, 19-year-old Maxim Vengerov seized immediate attention by opening the Sibelius Violin Concerto with ghostly, sweet, drawn-out tones to make a poignant and arresting statement. Nothing that ensued, unfortunately, revealed so personal an utterance again, nor seemed to relate back to this early one, although Vengerov’s conception throughout was never less than mature.

Yet he seemed increasingly more interested in polish and finesse, in seamless legato, in edgeless attacks, in executing the fierce virtuosic demands with nary a hitch or pause in his impressive fluency. His Sibelius began to sound more and more like the 19th Century, more like Mendelssohn than the uncanny new spirit the violinist first evoked.

Responsibility for the cold, raw, bold colors of the Scandinavian north fell more to the orchestra, under the direction of Mehli Mehta, and the players accommodated them perhaps as much by their youth as by Vengerov’s default.

The same brash colors could be heard, for instance, in the energetic account of the Overture to Bernstein’s “Candide,” which opened the program and the Mussorgsky-Ravel “Pictures at an Exhibition,” which closed it.

Although the playing of “The Old Castle” could have been more cohesive and “The Hut on Fowl’s Legs” more scary, “Pictures” in general was distinguished by confident and mellow brass, shimmering strings, some delicate wind solos and a final sense of Slavic grandeur and poignancy in “The Great Gate of Kiev.”

Prior to the playing of the Mussorgsky, Mehta led the strings of the orchestra in the second of Grieg’s Two Elegiac Melodies (“The Last Spring”) as a memorial to violinist Louis Kaufman, who died Feb. 9 at his home in Los Angeles at age 88.

The 85-year-old conductor led all the music from memory as he sat in a chair on the podium--that and a careful walk onto and off the stage being the only signs of a recent bout with triple pneumonia.