Zinman’s Consistent, Thoughtful Beethoven

Beethoven abides. Many things are changing about how symphonic music is produced and presented, but Beethoven continues to offer both challenge and refreshment to spirits on and off stage, as he did again Thursday evening at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under David Zinman.

Every generation seems to invent its own Beethoven--or two or three. And since Toscanini at least, most have done so in proud deference to the score, the composer’s presumed intentions and period style. At this point, it is almost as amazing that the music has survived all the research and reformation of the 20th century as it did all the additions and updating of the 19th.

There was nothing dogmatic about Zinman’s Beethoven. He has been giving it much thought of late, through well-received recordings of nine symphonies with his Tonhalle Orchestra in Switzerland. He seems to have arrived at a reflective synthesis of current ideas about tempos and instrumental balances with more personal and lyrical notions about the shape and energy of the constructs.

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This means he likes the music quick but not curt. All the dynamism and tension we expect of the “Egmont” Overture were present Thursday, but in a context of confidently rounded sound rather than the driving edge we hear so much now.

Similarly, there was nothing inhibited about the way Zinman developed the Seventh Symphony, but nothing forced, either. He brought a fresh emphasis to some details of the scoring and made the first two movements into a linked, dramatically contrasting pair, moving tellingly from the vast assurance of the opening to the Allegretto’s dissolution of contrapuntal logic.

The Philharmonic gave him mettlesome, accomplished playing. The woodwinds in particular consistently gave their best, delivering lithe, flavorful wonders not only in the more obvious solos but also in Beethoven’s crucial middle-ground web of motivic interplay.

At the center of the program lay the clarity and grace of Yefim Bronfman’s interpretation of the Piano Concerto No. 4. Bronfman has power and precision, to be sure. More important, he plays with a real sense of gesture-filled space and articulate weight, far beyond mere notesmanship.