Foster Lets Brahms’ Third Symphony Speak for Itself

Lawrence Foster said not a word to the audience in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Thursday night before leading Brahms’ Third Symphony, a work heard in this room just five weeks ago. Unlike Roger Norrington, another Los Angeles Philharmonic guest conductor, who talked for 15 minutes before his performance of the piece on Nov. 2, Foster did not try to put into words what Brahms has so successfully created in music.

As a result, the soaring and pensive, impassioned and intimate first movement spoke eloquently, as it had not last month, when it was sabotaged by all the talking.

The inner movements also shone, their quicksilver moods never succumbing to that feeling Norrington had labeled “depressive.” Instead they reflected the composer’s myriad varieties of sentiment.

The Philharmonic played the Third with all the balances of texture, mood and articulation of its best performances; emotionally, the work’s resonances seemed complete--as complete as the orchestra’s immaculate handling of texture, voicing and intonation. The finale summed it up, with all of the composer’s effortless heroism, of course. The glow of this performance will continue.

In the first half of the evening, Foster revived Cherubini’s wondrous “Anacreon” Overture in as tight and affecting a reading as seems possible.

Stephen Hough appeared as soloist in the program novelty, Franz Xaver Scharwenka’s Piano Concerto No. 4, a relic from 1908 that enjoyed great favor among pianists up to the middle of this century, then faded from view.

Hough is one of those specialists who can make this creaky old work seem defensible. Despite a lack of melody and drama, the Fourth Concerto makes a tremendous showcase for a pianist with the ability and stamina to play endless octave passages, arpeggios, runs, scales and strummed chords through four long movements, with little rest.

None of this gave the British pianist pause, and Foster’s attentive but forge-ahead accompaniment--Hough and Foster have recorded the work together--maintained the excitement of the risk-taking.

The result was perfectly admirable and seemed to delight a Pavilion full of happy observers. It is questionable, however, that anyone would want to hear this bombastic, clattery display of blurred-hand technique again soon. Or ever.

* This program repeats tonight at 8 and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., (213) 850-2000. $8-$63.