Creativity Enlivens Mozart, Strauss Early Compositions

We have our World Wide Web, our fast airplanes, our vast libraries of CDs, and all our talk of multiculturalism and the Earth as a global village. But sometimes, when cultural values are at issue, we seem more confused than ever.

Currently, some of us have become impatient with the Vienna Philharmonic for insisting that the purity of its tradition is more important than opening the orchestra to women. But then, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, on Thursday and through the weekend, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is treating Viennese music of even slight content with the reverence of a late-20th century concert, which would absolutely astound its makers.

Shh! No talking during the waltz. Stop that coughing! Good God, a violinist made a wrong entrance during the development section of the first movement of the symphony!

The names on the program Thursday night were big ones. Mozart and Schubert. Johann Strauss Jr. and his kid brother, Josef. All are composers whose music has endured for the obvious reasons of its genius and timelessness.

But Schubert’s Third Symphony and Mozart’s Fourth Violin Concerto, which made up the first half of the program, were written by 18-year-old composers who were cranking out vast quantities of youthful music. Schubert is said to have written some 200 works that year; Mozart, less, but still a lot. Each is a showoff piece--meant to wow Vienna but hardly the stuff of lasting art.

Those enormously popular Strauss brothers might have hoped that the best of their thousands of waltzes--four of which along with the overture to the operetta “Die Fledermaus” were the slight second half of the evening--might last, but again they were busy getting rich producing the popular music of the day. They knew exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it.

That the Philharmonic knows exactly what it is doing with this program, I’m not sure. “Light” music doesn’t necessarily sell--the hall was not full, and a surprising number of people left during the waltzes. But the orchestra does at least know not to be stuffy.

The conductor is Franz Welser-Most. The soloist in the Mozart concert is the orchestra’s concertmaster, Martin Chalifour. Both are young musicians, in their 30s. And both have ideas, which mean that they keep the interest level gratefully high throughout.

Welser-Most, an Austrian, has individual ways of punctuating by accenting with sharp, aggressive stabs from the lower strings. He seems as if he is always ready to spring something on the orchestra, which probably explains an unusual number of mishaps but which also kept listeners and players on the edge of our seats.

In the Mozart, Chalifour sounded strong and effortless as always. His tone, so clear and present, is a pleasure, as is his elegant phrasing. The almost arrogant confidence he exudes reminds one of Heifetz, and gives the listener the feeling that the music is being treated very well.

Welser-Most, to his credit, takes nothing for granted in the Strauss waltzes. Asking the players to dig in here, to cut loose there and always, always swing, he does not enforce an overrefined Vienna Philharmonic kind of Strauss playing. Rather he goes in for the kind of scrappiness that I suspect is a lot closer to period practice, to the lively concerts the Strauss brothers made with their orchestras than to a pompous New Year’s Eve in the Musikverein. And certainly a lot more fun.

* The Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Franz Welser-Most and with violinist Martin Chalifour performs the same program tonight at 8 and Sunday at 2:30 p.m., Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. $8-$60. (213) 365-3500.