Hirokami’s Attentive Conducting Brings Out Works’ Beauty

Sometimes cliches are true. The one about short conductors being compact and powerful, for instance. Junichi Hirokami is short, commanding and dynamic, but there is nothing cliched about his conducting, experienced again when the 40-year-old Japanese musician returned to the podium of the Los Angeles Philharmonic last week.

Some grumpy subscribers to the Friday night series in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion may have stayed away--the program listed Toru Takemitsu’s colorful “Twill by Twilight,” the Second Violin Concerto by Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff’s lush Third Symphony. The many who attended appreciated the music, the conductor and orchestra and soloist Alexander Treger enough to cheer them all loudly; they were right to do so.

Rachmaninoff’s touching and brilliant Third deserves the care and detail Hirokami and the orchestra brought to it, and no one who enjoys it should ever have to apologize: It is one beautiful and skillfully wrought piece of music, which has been maligned cruelly for the fact that it causes no pain and pretends to no lofty message. It should be revived at least as often as the lengthy Second.

In one of his annual solo appearances, Philharmonic concertmaster Treger proved the right protagonist for Prokofiev’s beloved G-minor Violin Concerto: He has what it needs in terms of technique, command of style and the ability to project. With tight assistance from Hirokami and the orchestra, his was a probing, lyrically thrilling performance.

At the start of the evening, the charismatic conductor found and caused the Philharmonic to deliver not only the pastels in Takemitsu’s neo-Impressionistic canvas but its harder edges and sense of direction, too. The results were revelatory.