Music Review : Philharmonic Comes Around in the End

Things didn’t begin promisingly as Robert Spano led the Los Angeles Philharmonic in his second program of the week on Thursday at the Hollywood Bowl. But at least they ended reasonably well.

The conductor opened the concert with a leaden, heavy-footed account of the Polonaise from Tchaikovsky’s “Yevgeny Onegin.” He tried to inject life into the playing by emphasizing swooping up-beats, but the results were unpleasant, exaggerated and no substitute for crisp, alert phrasing.

Kabalevsky’s Cello Concerto No. 1, which followed, presented a different kind of problem. Composed in 1948-49 to attract young people and the untutored Soviet public to serious music, the work is benumbingly simplistic, inadvertently insulting to a people whose folk music alone emerges from great depths of emotion.

Spano served pretty much as a time-beater here, not even trying to match the nimble and lyric phrasing of Ronald Leonard, principal cellist of the Philharmonic, who played his part with commitment and as much expressivity as the light-weight vehicle could bear. Why Leonard chose to memorize this trivial score is a mystery.

In comparison, Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2, which completed the program, sounded like a towering masterpiece. Spano did not lead a great or probing performance of the music, but one that was thoroughly respectable.

It was lean and restrained rather than lush and sweet, sometimes lax but blossoming in the big climax of the adagio and memorable for clarinetist Michele Zukovsky’s achingly gentle playing.

It should have sent the 8,761 people in attendance home happy.