A Pleasing Performance by Hirokami, Philharmonic

Finally hitting its stride three weeks into the summer season, the Los Angeles Philhar-monic gave an agreeable and showy performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, Thursday night in the Hollywood Bowl.

Japanese conductor Junichi Hirokami was again on the podium, demonstrating his acknowledged skills, if not the full extent of the charismatic presence remembered from past visits.

He did give complete support, as did the orchestra, to debutant soloist Lang Lang, the heralded, 18-year-old Chinese pianist, in the D-minor Concerto. But Hirokami seemed to run out of steam and interest in the final movements of Tchaikovsky’s familiar Fifth.

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Earlier in that performance, the compact conductor found the sweep and sometimes missing continuity in the work, giving the lengthy opening movement and the poetic flights of the Andante cantabile their lyric due. The orchestra responded handsomely, especially in the glorious playing of horn soloist William Lane in the second movement.

The rest of the piece emerged correct and clean, but pedestrian, and the finale remained earthbound. Dullness raised its bland head.

In the first half, young Lang Lang--still a student of Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia--remained impassive and quiet while negotiating the demands and hurdles of the Rachmaninoff concerto, and never achieved that level of passion and excitement the work contains.

The pianist’s gifts are abundant, but they do not yet include a genuine emotional rapport with this composer’s music.

Nevertheless, many resources of digitality and strength are clearly part of Lang Lang’s arsenal. How broad are his dynamics and how deep is his involvement? In this setting, where good sound engineering often reduces kaleidoscopic skills to a mezzo-forte sameness, it is difficult to tell.

In any case, the happy audience at this event admired the pianist loudly.