Music Review : Bell, Welser-Most Provide Power at Pavilion

Since his local debut, 11 years ago at the age of 16, Joshua Bell has fulfilled much of his evident promise. Thursday night, when he played the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, was no exception. Overachieving in 1984, the American violinist hasn’t grown more brilliant, but he has expanded his resources toward greater solidity, deeper penetration and a broader maturity of musical outlook. Bell’s Tchaikovsky Concerto with the Pasadena Symphony, way back then, was astounding. This week, his way with Sibelius produced genuine thrills and an array of dramatic facets.

Assisted attentively by guest conductor Franz Welser-Most and the orchestra, Bell brought the most serious kind of probing musicianship to the familiar work.

For the agonized lyricism of the first movement, he produced a sense of ritual keening, as well as mastery of its rhetoric. He did not relax his intensity in the Adagio, but found and projected its more heated moments with considerable ease and articulate technique.

The earnestness Bell brought to the finale came in admirable contrast to the usual bonhomie some soloists choose. This directness of statement paid off in the final pages, when the violinist from Indiana simply and breathtakingly guided the work inexorably to its ending.

The rest of the evening measured up. Welser-Most concluded it with a joyous and brilliant account--without overlooking the glooms in the opening movement--of Shostakovich’s sometimes maligned Sixth Symphony. Despite some loss of focus at the end of the Largo, this became a truly virtuosic display.

The overture to the program was Hindemith’s showy, irresistible Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber, a pleasure on most occasions, only less so here because this otherwise bright reading suffered from consistently muddy textures.

* The Los Angeles Philharmonic repeats this program at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Sunday, 2:30 p.m., and without the Shostakovich work, Saturday, 2 p.m. Tickets, $6.-$58; Saturday matinee: $5.-$25. (213) 365-3500.