L.A. Philharmonic Embraces Beauty of Insightful Estonian Composer

Estonian composer Arvo Part might not appear to have the right stuff to be as widely known and admired as he is. He makes music of spare, meditative beauty, music that is in no hurry to impress, but manages to do so with its depth and sense of a quiet searching. In fact, Part is a composer for these harried times. Which means we now look back with curiosity to his earlier music, such as his First Symphony, written in 1964, in an expressive post-serial style markedly different from the mature vocabulary of his recent work.

This served as the opening and most intriguing piece on the Los Angeles Philharmonic program Thursday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, where it was first heard locally five years ago. Guest conductor Paavo Jarvi also hails from Estonia, which may give him some native insight with this material. But the young conductor also showed his poetry and skill with the disparate themes of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor--with the dazzling Russian Boris Berezovsky as soloist--and Schumann’s Second Symphony.

The early Part symphony heeds the lessons and schemes of the Second Viennese School, but it also projects some of the values we recognize in his later, more personal works: lucid interlocking of lines and the savoring of instrumental textures. The piece ends with a striking, broadly intonated swarm of string sound, set against martial assertions of brass and timpani.

From pre-Bolshevik Russia came the Prokofiev piano showpiece, which premiered in 1913. Today, it sounds like music happily torn between twin idiomatic urges, pulled to the past glories of things romantic and nudging ahead toward modernism. Pianist Berezovsky met the virtuosic challenge with a burly gusto, not stopping to mince notes or get lost in details. The last movement is the most mercurial, between its simple, sad tune and a last gruff flourish of a solo to finish.

Schumann’s Second Symphony is a big yet fragile jewel and was handled accordingly here. The outer movements wax heroic, the scherzo is stocked with teasing ritards, and the touching adagio plays like an elegy for the composer’s own vulnerable mental stability. Those dramatic dynamics were clearly conveyed by the orchestra, which seemed keenly attuned to Jarvi’s cool, deft hand.

* Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Jarvi, repeats this program tonight at 8, and Sunday at 2:30 p.m., Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., $11-$65. (213) 365-3500.