Soprano Shin, Philharmonic Join for Engaging Concert

With its final Hollywood Bowl stint of the summer behind it, the Los Angeles Philharmonic moved indoors Tuesday. The place was Pasadena Civic Auditorium, however, and the occasion an odd but highly rewarding run-out: a community concert celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Korea Central Daily and featuring Korean soprano Youngok Shin.

A Gilda and a Lucia at major opera houses around the world, the Juilliard-trained singer seems most comfortable with overt emotions. She brought a clear, lustrous upper range and disappearing lows to her Mozart assignments, projecting both the nobility and the distress of Pamina’s “Ach, ich fuhl’s,” but skating rather formally around a real commitment to the “Exsultate, jubilate” motet.

Her encores, “O mio babbino caro” and a plush arrangement of the Korean folk song “Dong Shim Cho,” found Shin on congenial expressive ground, where her considerable charisma and diva mannerisms supported the music.

In a rare meeting with Puccini, Esa-Pekka Salonen wanted to push “O mio babbino caro” along, but he quickly acceded to Shin’s luxuriant way with it, supporting her gracefully. He kept a tighter rein on Mozart, leading a slightly reduced orchestra in crisp, pointed accompaniment. A robust yet nimble account of the “Magic Flute” Overture was their opener.

Salonen paired Mozart with Brahms’ First Symphony, which he and the Philharmonic had just done last week at the Bowl. It is easy to hear a bracingly modernist rethinking applied retrospectively here to Brahms, but in this context it seemed equally valid to hear Mozartean dynamism and drama projected forward into Brahms.

From any perspective, though, this is an intensely vital and revealingly integrated interpretation, passionate without sentimentality and stunningly played. The Philharmonic sounded fully engaged, taut and powerful in ensemble and brimming with striking solo work utterly apt to the moment.