Lopez-Cobos’ Warm Spanish Sampler

Too long away, Jesus Lopez-Cobos returned for a single night to the podium of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and displayed again--after a nine-year absence--the kinds of colorful and luxuriant sounds he can coax from this orchestra. His latest program, a sampler of Spanish-flavored items by Rimsky-Korsakov, Ravel and Falla, made the Hollywood Bowl a warm place to be on a cool Tuesday night.

The best came last, in rich and many-hued readings of Ravel’s “Rapsodie Espagnole” and a too-skimpy suite from Falla’s “Three-Cornered Hat,” in which complete rapport between podium and ensemble, and brilliant soloism from within the orchestra, produced magic performances of sweeping beauty and pungent detailing. Lopez-Cobos and his associates revealed the inner lives of these kaleidoscopic scores in their full range, and the results proved hard to resist.

More aggressive, sometimes even brittle, performances took place before intermission, beginning with a perfunctory National Anthem.

Then, Rimsky’s “Capriccio Espagnol,” an impression rather than a picture of Spanish life, became a bright showcase for some of the Philharmonic’s in-house soloists, in particular concertmaster Alexander Treger.

Making her Hollywood Bowl debut, the Madrid-born Rosa Torres-Pardo exhibited deep authority as well as wondrous and convincing poetry in the Classical lines and jazzy idioms of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G.

Her resourceful technique commanded the work’s broad contours; her sense of legato and her exquisite trills gave humanity to its songfulness. Assisted thoroughly by conductor and orchestra, she found a perfect balance between rhetoric and subtlety.