Weekend Reviews : Music : Boulez’s Return Raises Philharmonic’s Energy

Revelations and epiphanies abound when Pierre Boulez makes his regular but rare appearances to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

If there were not so many eyebrow-raisers in the orchestra’s performances of the French musician’s first-week’s agenda this year, the elevated standard of the orchestra’s playing, and the kinetic alertness of the players, still made the event--heard Friday in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion--special. Two years away is a long time.

The main business of this first program was its bright conclusion, Bartok’s pantomime score, “A czodalatos mandarin,” usually translated as the “Miraculous Mandarin”--though some Bartokians, the late Halsey Stevens for one, have disputed that.

The kaleidoscopic work received as brilliant and disturbing a reading as it deserves, full of familiar and rethought details, instrumental resonances and telling solo lines from the Philharmonic’s phalanx of first-chair virtuosos.

*

Orchestra and conductor, apparently of one mind, achieved a hyper-energetic but controlled performance, yet seemed as fresh at the end as at the start. The Pavilion audience, which appeared to pack the auditorium, responded vociferously.

At the opposite end of this evening was another ear-opener, a stately but compelling, lush-toned revival of the Prelude to Wagner’s “Parsifal”--a piece as sensual/ spiritual as Bartok’s “Mandarin” is brutal and violent. Here, under Boulez’s watchful ears, all choirs of the orchestra, but in particular the strings, created a plush carpet of sound, which they then displayed, without succumbing to stasis. This kind of concentration on the parts of players and listeners occurs only when an exigent podium leader causes it.

At mid-program, Schoenberg’s “Verklarte Nacht” found the same Philharmonic strings less consistently transparent, even in moments flirting with unbalanced textures. Still, under Boulez’s sharp attentions, the scenario of the work progressed logically, its beauties were laid out, and its drama unfolded.

* L.A. Philharmonic, conducted by Pierre Boulez. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., (213) 365-3500). Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Program: “Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune”; “La Mer” (Debussy); “Le visage nuptial” (Boulez); “Une barque sur l’ocean”; “Alborada del Gracioso” (Ravel). $6.-$50.