MUSIC REVIEW : Philharmonic Serves Lemonade, Not Vodka

The best laid schemes o’ mice and Ernest Fleischmann gang oft kerfluey.

Promise them vodka, but give them lemonade.

It happened Friday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The Los Angeles Philharmonic had intended to host Valery Gergiev, the man of the hour in Russian culture, in the opening of a two-week festival devoted to music of Tchaikovsky--most of it relatively obscure. But Gergiev found himself detained in St. Petersburg “as a result,” we are told, “of unforeseen television production and performance schedule changes.”

Scratch Gergiev. Substitute Carl St.Clair.

Carl St.Clair? Yes. Carl St.Clair, the popular and energetic all-American maestro of the Pacific Symphony. He traveled 35 miles, from deepest and darkest Costa Mesa, to save the Philharmonic in its moment of crisis. (The trip might not have been necessary if our official assistant conductor had been available, but Grant Gershon was busy beating time for John Adams and Peter Sellars at UC Berkeley.)

St.Clair performed honorably. He is a reliable technician, an agreeable podium personality and a solid, informed musician. He commands strong nerves. He knows the standard repertory. He savors the value of a mighty noise that sends ‘em home happy.

Still, he didn’t--couldn’t--replace Gergiev on Gergiev’s terms. The native Texan played Tchaikovsky with a pervasively slick all-American accent. During the second half of the program, he added repertory injury to stylistic insult by programming the all-too-familiar Fourth Symphony instead of the seldom-heard “Manfred.”

It is clearly to St.Clair’s credit that nothing went awry at his emergency debut. He had the musical challenges well in hand, ungainly podium stances notwithstanding. The Philharmonic played well for him. Professionals were at work here.

Nevertheless, those who came hoping to hear authentic Tchaikovsky had to be disappointed. Most Russian conductors manage somehow to make Russian romanticism brood and whisper, soar and sigh, without exaggeration. They find mellow lyricism at the core of the dramatic gesture. They place the inevitable thunder within a dramatic context that mutes the potential vulgarity.

American conductors tend to go for surface effects. And so it was with St.Clair.

He encouraged the Philharmonic to dance through the C-major Serenade for Strings with considerable grace and charm. But he didn’t linger over any insinuating nuances, didn’t find many opportunities to illuminate a crucial phrase, didn’t seem to notice any undercurrent of unrest beneath the pretty tunes. His Serenade was always proper, always efficient, seldom memorable.

The echoes of Balanchine continued to resound with the Third Piano Concerto--a.k.a. Allegro Brillante. It is a dense, choppy, forbidding exercise in gnarled rhetoric, and the conductor could do little to clarify the textures or unravel the melodic knots.

The orchestra played fast and loud. Louis Lortie, the potentially elegant soloist, played fast and, under the circumstances, not loud enough. Perhaps he should have tried to locate the souped-up piano that used to belong to Vladimir Horowitz. The instrument at Lortie’s disposal, a Fazioli concert grand, fought a losing battle with the hyper-clunky orchestral apparatus.

Returning after intermission, St.Clair tried in vain to vitalize the platitudes of the Fourth. He didn’t identify much mystery, much nobility or much continuity in the challenge. But he did awaken the dead at the outset of the opening Andante. He did phrase the pizzicato scherzo with elan, and he did make the mightiest of cumulative noises in the zonking finale.

This may not have been a particularly discerning interpretation. But its massive thud did bring down the house.

Next week, we are assured, Gergiev will escape the Kirov bureaucracy in time to lead the Philharmonic in a concert performance of Tchaikovsky’s little-known opera, “Iolanta.” Hope springs internal.