Music Review : In Debut, Chinese Pianist Replaces Ailing Yo-Yo Ma

The scenario is well-known: A famous musician cancels a performance due to illness and is replaced by an unknown young soloist who burns up the stage with brilliance.

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Well, it didn’t happen Thursday night. At the first of four sold-out Los Angeles Philharmonic performances in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Chinese pianist Xiang-Dong Kong took over for the pneumonia-felled Chinese cellist Yo-Yo Ma, playing the Second Piano Concerto by Rachmaninoff.

Assisted handsomely by the Philharmonic and guest conductor Andrew Davis, the 26-year-old Kong displayed fine promise but an unstartling accomplishment.

Still, aside from the frustration for Yo-Yo Ma’s many fans, the event’s biggest disappointment was not so much Kong’s playing as the effect of his substitution on the scheduled program.

The evening was to have paired first-half Mendelssohn, the “Hebrides” Overture and the “Reformation” Symphony, with second-half Prokofiev, the big-boned Sinfonia Concertante for cello and orchestra. In the event, Rachmaninoff and intermission were sandwiched between the Mendelssohn pieces.

One doesn’t have to dislike these pieces to see that, together, their unthreatening tonality and lack of emotional conflict makes for an agenda of unrelieved pleasantries.

As Davis said from the podium Thursday, “The program we now bring you is more conventional.” For sure.

That said, one could enjoy the level of expertise brought here by Davis and our orchestra. The 51-year-old British conductor always seems to provide sounds that make sense and music; he slights neither continuity nor content, and one always hears the composer’s voice.

Under Davis, Mendelssohn’s familiar overture seemed to resonate anew, as did also the pithy middle movements of the Fifth Symphony. As for the bombast in the outer sections, it became part of the landscape.

For Kong, Davis and the orchestra provided a background of solid support. The pianist proved better than capable--Kong will repeat the work at his Hollywood Bowl debut, Aug. 3--but less than ear-opening.

Both his strength and his coloristic and dynamic resources seem at this time limited, and he did not traverse the complex finale with great ease. Still, he carried off this appearance, on one day’s notice, with considerable aplomb, graciously sharing his bows with conductor and orchestra.