A Tribute Sealed With Kisses

You wouldn’t have believed all the hugging and kissing going on. Bear hugs, actually, and not just social air kisses but double-sided face smackers. Even handshakes were prolonged and filled with heat.

Only waiters carrying hot plates were immune when Ernest Fleischmann, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s retired executive vice president and managing director, was honored at a benefit concert for the orchestra Tuesday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

The big, full-bodied embraces occurred not only onstage, where a confluence of classical stars--Zubin Mehta, Mstislav Rostropovich and Gundula Janowitz--performed, but also afterward at a festive dinner on the Music Center plaza.

Intense body contact was quite evident when you could hear photographers beseeching VIPs not to stand so close together. And it wasn’t because the extraordinary baroque tent in which the post-concert party took place felt like a subzero refrigerator.

“The love affair between Zubin and Ernest has been one of the most productive and electrifying relationships in the music industry,” conductor John Williams said, partly explaining the exuberance. “They love each other, and it shows.”

“Ernest’s son just said, ‘Thanks for coming.’ I said, ‘Would I miss this?’ ” said Mehta, who was the music director of the Philharmonic for 16 years. “Ernest’s farewell? I brought him here.”

Theirs wasn’t the only love affair. Everyone got into the act--Frank Gehry, Sherry Lansing, Fred Hayman, Lee Iacocca, Barbara Sinatra, Anjelica Huston, Ginny Mancini, Peter O’Malley, Nancy Mehta.

When Rostropovich learned that Gregory Peck was there, he fairly leaped from his dinner table, with its 7-foot-high floral arrangement, artichokes and lemons included, to, you know, completely wrap himself around the silver-haired actor.

It was the second time Fleischmann was made the man of the hour. In June, an evening in his honor was held at the Hollywood Bowl.

“After a 29-year career, it seems only appropriate to have him summer and winter,” said Ferne Margulies, who co-chaired the evening with Ken McCormick and Nancy Sanders. The event raised about $850,000 for the Philharmonic’s education and community programs.

“It’s very moving,” said Fleischmann. The only disappointment was the last-minute sick call from Esa-Pekka Salonen, in whose absence Mehta conducted the program.

“I sent him an e-mail,” Fleischmann reported. “I told him I learned a lesson. We’ve got to have two conductors scheduled for each concert now.”