Fischer and L.A. Philharmonic Find the Fury in Bartok

Outrage has been part of Bartok’s “Miraculous Mandarin” since its belated premiere in 1926. It has been a product of this “pantomime grotesque,” but it also fuels the internal combustion of the piece, a cathartic rage against the machine very forcibly expressed by Ivan Fischer and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Thursday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

There is much heat but little light in the sexually charged scenario. Bartok depicts a seedy, urban underworld of manic, self-devouring energies and cruelty through virtuoso orchestration and savagely flagellated rhythms. This is not music that seeks transcendence or explanation.

Instead, it finds a furious but fleeting strength in obsession and revulsion. The daunting score has been something of a minor Philharmonic specialty over recent decades, thanks to the championship of Pierre Boulez. Fischer’s approach is one of incandescent drive, not a whit less accurate than Boulez’s icy precision but a good deal hotter.

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The Philharmonic responded with harrowing vehemence, hammering home the glittering, jittering metropolitan passions. The orchestra-wide cast of soloists was led by the insinuating characterizations of clarinetist Michele Zukovsky and trombonist Ralph Sauer. A contingent of the Los Angeles Master Chorale provided the brief, but crucial, wordless exorcism of the Mandarin.

The concert’s titular soloist proved equally impressive and inspiring. Akiko Suwanai does not arrive with the media tail winds that we might expect from a personable winner of the 1990 Tchaikovsky Competition, but the Japanese violinist made everything possible of Prokofiev’s Concerto in D, No. 1. Cleanly focused, highly personalized, technically unflappable playing illuminated the breakthrough work, coeval with the Bartok but in another galaxy as far as aesthetic life-force goes.

Fischer opened with a muscular account of Mozart’s early G-minor Symphony, No. 25, alert and agile but not at all abashed about being executed by a big, modern-instrument band.