Norrington Invigorates Philharmonic

With Esa-Pekka Salonen off the premises until next season, guest conductors occupy the remaining weeks of this Los Angeles Philharmonic season. Roger Norrington, first of these visitors--and probably the only one who will eschew the use of a podium--led the orchestra in a program sans soloists Thursday night in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

As he usually does, the British musician led provocative performances, obviously pleasing a ready-to-be-thrilled audience with Haydn’s Symphony No. 83 and Schubert’s “Great” C-major Symphony. The exhilaration one has come to expect in Norrington’s re-thought readings again surfaced.

A quest for authenticity or plain stubbornness or perhaps the love of work seems to cause this controversial conductor to take every single repeat in any given piece. In Haydn’s beloved G-minor work, called “La Poule,” one could be grateful for the extension of beauties and felicitous details, especially since all of them were exquisitely played by the reduced Philharmonic on Thursday.

The lengthening of Schubert’s already expansive magnum opus this time around, however, appeared arbitrary, even willful.

Even for one who loves it, who thought he might never get enough of it, Schubert’s finale provoked visions of eternity as its musical materials kept recycling themselves. Narrating the Quartetto Gelato concert last week, George Meanwell described a rondo as a movement “in which the main tune keeps coming back, until you know it.” That comment seemed appropriate here.

Yet this was an inspiriting performance--as was Norrington’s lavish but controlled run-through of the Haydn piece. It was single-minded in its gentle exploration of the work’s byways even as it kept continuity in the foreground. The orchestra played with the same passion the conductor exhibits in his overdrawn body language; the look may be exaggerated, but the musical results emerge contained.

* L.A. Philharmonic, Roger Norrington,conductor; Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., (213) 365-3500. Symphony No. 9, “The Great” (Schubert). Today, 2 p.m. $5-$25.