A Pleasant, Uninspired Show at the Bowl

It’s usually a happy occasion when Liverpool-born Simon Rattle visits the podium of the L.A. Philharmonic, and he got a warm welcome when he again ascended that riser for the second and final concert of his brief stint here. If the performances he led Thursday night in Hollywood Bowl emerged as standard, middle of the road and uninspired events, it was still a pleasant evening. And the Philharmonic played quite neatly.

Rattle sometimes rushes through the music; this time he did less pushing than one might have expected in Brahms’ B-flat Piano Concerto and in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. though neither suffered particularly from conductorial dawdling. The tempo-shock came early, in a “Star-Spangled Banner” as breezy as a waltz, and in no wise anthem-like.

Pianist Stephen Hough, Rattle’s 35-year-old countryman, was no more than an efficient protagonist in the Brahms concerto, which he played accurately but with few of its musical colors and little of its personality, grandeur and nobility. This turned out to be a prosaic re-creation of one of the great--perhaps greatest--epic poems in the piano-concerto repertory.

Through this major challenge, and the possible minefield that is Beethoven’s Fifth, Rattle presided over careful and uneventful orchestral performing. All through the Philharmonic, and on the podium, strong professionalism reigned. The thrills in these masterpieces--including those in Mozart’s “Nozze di Figaro” Overture, which followed that too-quick national anthem--will have to wait for another time.