MUSIC REVIEW : A Recycled Mozart From Zubin Mehta

Say this for Zubin Mehta’s Mozart. It isn’t fussy, and it certainly isn’t precious.

It also isn’t particularly graceful, sensitive or stylish. Call it assertive. Call it muscular. Call it hearty. Call it heroic. Call it ponderous. And, yes, sometimes call it sloppy.

That’s the way it is. That’s the way it virtually always has been.

Thursday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, our former music-director returned to conduct the final Philharmonic program of 1994. For better or worse, he made it a Mozart night.

The repertory offered an odd combination of predictable and jolting elements. The concert began with two familiar symphonies--No. 32 in G, K.318, and No. 41, K.551, a.k.a. “Jupiter”--and ended with an almost-premiere--”Davidde Penitente,” K.469.

Almost -premiere? The concept borders on the oxymoronic. All things are possible, however, in the wonderful world of Wolfgang Amadeus, and our orchestra had never before ventured this music in this form. The last three words are the crucial qualifiers.

The quasi-novelty in question demonstrates some creative recycling mustered for the Vienna of 1785. “Davidde Penitente” represents a drastic but hasty revision of the so-called “Great” Missa in C-minor, written in 1783. In converting the Mass to cantata, Mozart superimposed an Italian text (librettist unknown) on the Kyrie and Gloria of the popular Latin original, added a couple of bravura arias, and rewrote a trio section in the choral finale.

The resulting hybrid isn’t Mozart at his most coherent. The juxtaposition of operatic show and spiritual tell can be a bit disconcerting. The choruses tend to sound merely hectic when they want to be nobly agitated. An iconoclast, moreover, might question the quality of some portions of the first version.

Never mind. Even when Mozart is less than sublime, he is still more stimulating than many a composer at his lofty best. And concert-goers cannot live on masterpieces alone.

The performance on Thursday did not serve the problematic cause particularly well. Mehta made Mozart rather loud, prosaic and primitive.

The maestro didn’t pause to search for subtlety. He tended to trample potentially introspective nuances. He seldom held back the orchestra for the relatively fragile soloists.

He did sustain a certain degree of urgency, however, amid an aura of warm and fuzzy Gemutlichkeit . Give him that.

The solo trio was dominated by Ruth Ann Swenson, fresh from “Lucia di Lammermoor” in San Francisco. She sailed through the ornate coloratura with laughing ease, shaded the line with fine dynamic flexibility, confronted the range extensions with dauntless valor, and reduced the text to a pretty vocalise (vowels, yes; consonants, well . . . ).

Swenson’s big, bright soprano did not blend very effectively with Susanne Mentzer’s not-so-big, pliant mezzo-soprano. Nevertheless, the seconda donna held her own artfully, some dubious trills notwithstanding. Kurt Streit, remembered as Tamino in the Music Center “Zauberflote,” sang the tenor solos with tasteful virtuosity and pallid tone.

Members of Los Angeles Master Chorale, trained by the redoubtable Paul Salamunovich, dispatched their complex duties lustily if not always smoothly. Gloria Cheng played the continuo, we think; her harpsichord remained inaudible.

The first half of the agenda involved Mozart by the numbers. In Mehta’s perfunctory hands, the modest Symphony No. 32 functioned as listless overture to a broad and dutiful “Jupiter.”

Poetic intimacy was scarce. So, at the other extreme, was thunderous grandeur.

* Zubin Mehta repeats this program with Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tonight he conducts Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony and Bruckner’s Ninth (a holdover from last week). Tickets $6-$50 at the box office. Information: (213) 850-2000.