Music : Rekindling Mozart and Bruckner--Mehta-Style

It was just like old times, Friday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Well, almost like old times.

Zubin Mehta, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1962 to 1978, was back for the first of two weeks as guest on his erstwhile podium. His program began with eine kleine Mozart-musik , which served as an innocent prelude to the big business at hand: Bruckner’s lush, lavish, anguished, sprawling, convoluted, recalcitrant, incomplete, ever-indulgent, semi-mystical, quasi-religious, ultra-Romantic, deceptively climactic, never-ending valedictory, the Symphony No. 9.

The mighty Bruckner challenge has long been a mighty Mehta specialty. The maestro first ventured it here during his inaugural season, and he repeated it on numerous occasions thereafter. Germanic heroism has always brought out the best in him, after a fashion.

Mehta’s approach to Bruckner in general, and to the Ninth in particular, does not seem to have changed drastically over the decades. It is a bigger-than-life, no-holds-barred, flex-all-the muscles approach that makes its zonking case primarily in visceral, not spiritual, terms.

The approach is certainly legitimate. Bruckner could roar and thunder in the best gargantuan tradition. He tried desperately to out-Wagner Wagner, and he savored the impact of a long, momentous, circuitous journey.

Mehta always took the composer’s instructions at face value. He made the large gesture very large indeed, and the long line very long. He moved slowly (for 71 generous minutes), savoring each expressive nuance and every melodic indulgence. He put useful quotation marks around the borrowed passages, and luxuriated in the dramatic impact of extended Luftpausen.

He made no effort to disguise the episodic nature of Bruckner’s start-and-stop inventions. He did little to clarify timbres that tend toward mush. He often sacrificed poetry for drama. Still, he made good aesthetic sense on his own unabashedly gusty and gutsy terms.

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Other conductors have done more to balance Bruckner’s bombast with introspection. Others have found more subtlety beneath the bravado, more pianissimos beside the fortissimos. Others have chosen to understate the obvious, keeping the textures transparent and the tempos swift. Others have managed to sustain greater tension against the odds.

Ultimately, Bruckner interpretation becomes a matter of taste. One man’s grandeur is another’s vulgarity.

In any case, one had to admire the unbridled force, the abiding warmth, the daring breadth and the obvious conviction of Mehta’s performance. One also had to notice that the Philharmonic, possibly under-rehearsed, responded to his flamboyant urgings with more bravado than finesse.

In a recent New Yorker article, incidentally, Paul Griffiths wrote that Mehta, who led the New York Philharmonic after leaving Los Angeles, “is remembered with far more fondness in Los Angeles than in New York.” One wonders.

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Mozart’s G-major Concerto, K. 216, served as a gentle prelude to the not-so-gentle Bruckner. It also served as a memorable introduction to David Garrett, a German violinist making his U.S. debut.

Garrett happens to be only 14, if one gauges such statistics chronologically rather than artistically. Mozart was a grand old man of 19 when he wrote this, his third violin concerto.

In this collaboration of precocious teen-agers, Garrett played Mozart with telling mastery of both score and style. If the young man was nervous, his poise belied it.

He brought eager grace to the agitation of the opening allegro, uncommonly sweet tone to the arching cantilena of the adagio, perky charm to the rondo finale. He even made Eugene Ysaye’s Romantic cadenzas sound organic.

Mehta and the Philharmonic provided attentive, obviously affectionate, slightly untidy accompaniment.

In response to a deserved push-button ovation, the soloist beamed and announced an enigmatic encore: “Johann Sebastian Bach.” The choice turned out to be the sarabande from the B-minor partita, elegantly dispatched.

David Garrett. Remember the name.

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Zubin Mehta conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. Mozart program: Thursday and Friday, 8 p.m., and Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Bruckner Ninth and Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony: Saturday, 8 p.m. Tickets $6 to $50 at the box office. (213) 850-2000.