Harding Masters Unorthodox Program

Hyperkinetic and proactive on the podium, Daniel Harding, the wiry, 22-year-old British conductor who is making his regular-season debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic this week, has another side. He can be frighteningly still, the very opposite of nervous.

And, like any young person in a public spotlight, he can choose to move--as he did at his first entrance onto the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage Wednesday--very slowly, perhaps even willfully. When you’re 22, you don’t have to prove your energy level.

Harding’s oddball program this week was definitely willful. It began pointedly with the middle-period String Quintet in F (1879) by Anton Bruckner that was merely transferred from chamber scoring to the string-orchestra medium. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27, K. 595, with Robert Levin as soloist, came after the intermission, followed by the short, suite version of Bartok’s “Miraculous Mandarin” ballet music. So far, so unorthodox.

Up to the time Harding gives a downbeat, he seems self-deprecating and sincerely modest. But he goes about his conducting business aggressively, and with no hesitation.

His comments, quoted in the notes, about the Bruckner Quintet-cum-symphony, showed a great affection for the work, as did his physical approach to it. Later, he proved a thorough and highly detailed collaborator in the Mozart work. Then, he closed the evening with a visceral yet tightly controlled run-through of the Bartok excerpts. His talent is undoubted.

Even so, one has to question Harding’s decision to use the slight Bruckner Quintet as a 50-minute overture. Pleasant and innocuous it may be, but not to the extent that one would prefer it to, say, a neglected work by Mendelssohn or Schumann or Virgil Thomson. Is there a defensible reason to haul it out?

The orchestra’s performance of it was uneventful, the players producing even higher dynamic contrasts than the low-rent musical environment required. They did the same in Bartok’s deserving suite, delivering most of the color inherent in the score.

The admirable, light-fingered Levin brought spontaneity and a thinking-pianist’s resources to the wonders of Mozart’s K. 595, meshing with Harding and the Philharmonic effortlessly, as if they all do this regularly. Perhaps they should.

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* Daniel Harding conducts the L.A. Philharmonic in the same program at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., today at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Without the Bruckner work, they play this program Saturday at 2 p.m. (213) 850-2000. Today and Sunday: $8-$63. Saturday: $5-$26.