Bowl Season Opens With Precision, Little Flair

Two novelties marked the first of the Thursday night Los Angeles Philharmonic subscription concerts of the Hollywood Bowl summer season: first the debut of the prize-winning 17-year-old Korean-born cellist, Han-Na Chang; then a compilation of several orchestrations of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” put together by the American conductor Leonard Slatkin, who led the performance.

It was a low-key, low-energy evening that could have been raised up by exciting playing in the opener, the Suite from Shostakovich’s “The Age of Gold.” But there, too, the orchestra proved uninspired. Who would have thought this pungent, pleasing score could fall so flat?

Chang’s quietly commanding, technically resourceful performance of Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, at mid-program, showed the most life at this event. Even so, and despite strong rapport between cellist and accompanists, the work tended to evaporate in the wide-open spaces of Cahuenga Pass; subtleties one might have been able to admire in an indoor setting seemed lost in this one. The soloist is clearly gifted and ready for her opportunities; a return visit will no doubt confirm her promise.

Just before the “Pictures” performance, Slatkin told the Bowl audience he had studied and examined 21 instrumentations of Mussorgsky’s suite. He chose orchestrations by Henry Wood, Leopold Stokowski, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sergei Gorchakov and others--including Maurice Ravel, whose version is the one most often heard.

The approach was theoretically interesting, but the result in no way grabbed the listener. A brilliant performance would have proved the exercise worthwhile, but this one merely moved along, without compulsion, insights or thrills.