Philharmonic Gives Another Listen to the ‘40s

Music from the ‘40s made up the program that guest conductor Christoph Eschenbach brought to the Los Angeles Philharmonic over the weekend: Leonard Bernstein’s “Jeremiah” Symphony from 1943, Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto from 1941 and Robert Schumann’s Second Symphony from about 100 years earlier (1845).

The combination pleased, and the medium-sized audience at the first performance in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Friday afternoon cheered appropriately.

American mezzo-soprano Florence Quivar took the important solos in the Lamentation finale of Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 with her usual opulence; principal concertmaster Martin Chalifour was featured in the Barber piece, which he played with faultless technique and fervent, flowing lyricism.

The orchestral playing proved less neat than one expects in such standard repertory: In the Schumann work, the instrumentalists seemed lackadaisical until the final movements, when the composer’s self-hypnotism began to operate. Matinees can be low-energy affairs; this first one of the orchestra’s season finally lifted off.

Bernstein’s youthful, earnest and portentous First Symphony, a product of his early 20s, needs no apology. The composer’s gifts and achievement here met the challenges of dramatic continuity to form what might be considered a three-act musical play in which each movement follows a plan of emotional flowering built upon what preceded it, and the beginning provides the original impetus.

The work is compelling; Eschenbach and his colleagues let it speak.

The joys in the Barber concerto are those concocted by a master song-maker. The opening movements have a natural fluidity of irresistible charm, while the finale caps the proceedings with irrepressible motoric activity. Barber put it all together with such seamless skill and panache, it seems to have taken no effort on his part. Yet it exists to give pleasure, and this performance, also effortless from all the participants, produced such pleasure.

The real world--in the form of much coughing from the audience--intruded on this afternoon performance more often than desirable, yet there were compensations, as in Jerry Folsom’s seraphic horn solo in the middle movement of the Violin Concerto, and clarinetist Lorin Levee’s solo contribution to the slow movement of the Schumann symphony. Guest principal trumpet for the week was Jack Sutte, a member of the Cleveland Orchestra.