From Russia, With a Fresh Approach to Tchaikovsky

This year, for the first time in the event’s 27 summers, the protagonists of the Tchaikovsky Spectacular at the Hollywood Bowl could claim Russian citizenship.

The Kirov Orchestra from St. Petersburg, conductor Valery Gergiev and pianist Nikolai Lugansky took the Bowl stage Friday night for the first of three performances of a program listing the Fifth Symphony, the B-flat-minor Piano Concerto and, with the now obligatory fireworks show, the “1812” Overture.

If the performances could thus be considered idiomatic, their many virtues still had more to do with the accomplishment of the players than with their nationality; the charismatic Gergiev, clearly a deep thinker where this composer is concerned, would no doubt cause similarly stylish and probing readings with any orchestra.

His direct and untroubled approach to the Fifth Symphony made it seem fresh, even to ears encrusted with decades of memories. Gergiev laid out the piece in sequential logic, letting its forward thrust dictate its emotional pace.

Rather than rushing through those many transitional passages that bridge the parts of the symphony, Gergiev savored them, creating a sense of inexorable progress.

If, as a result, the total playing time became extended, it also made the entire work seem tighter than ever. The 43-year-old conductor positively reveled in the work’s connective tissue; the results fairly sang. Among the many beauties highlighted here, the solo playing from the woodwind section in the slow movement made the familiar score seem new, as well as urgent. And one could take for granted the thrilling but never strident playing of the upper strings.

Lugansky, the 1994 Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition winner, showed himself equipped with a casually awesome technique and a poet’s love of searching, in the First Piano Concerto.

The result was, at least in the opening movement, not heroic but wimpy. The 24-year-old pianist seemed to have fileted the work’s backbone cleanly from its musical meat. Even through a wealth of beauteous and caressive details, one still missed the cathartic, climactic heart of the piece. Where, for instance, was the great cadenza that sums up the work? Hidden in thickets of lyrical scrutiny.

The serene slow movement, with its contrasting scherzo at midpoint, and the aggressive finale emerged more orthodox, and more successful.