Cuts and Flourishes at the Bowl

Thursday night, Miguel Harth-Bedoya and the Los Angeles Philharmonic continued the loosely Latinate theme they are pursuing at the Hollywood Bowl this week--this time concentrating on Southern Europe as processed through the minds of Russians. It looked like a good program for the Bowl, too--with two festive Russian-made Capriccios as bookends surrounding some rarely performed Rachmaninoff (the sole departure from the theme) and a famously bizarre contemporary take on the tunes of Bizet’s “Carmen.”

The latter is Rodion Shchedrin’s “Carmen Ballet,” the flashy, witty, slightly deranged showpiece for strings and lots of percussion that was Shchedrin’s main calling card in the West during the Soviet era. Alas, nearly two-thirds of the score was slashed from this performance, leaving an unsatisfying 15-minute torso. Not only that, the percussion section was poorly miked, so what remained of the music sounded undernourished.

There was no lack of ripeness in intense-looking, Armenian-born (in 1970) pianist Vardan Mamikonian’s performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1, pouring on the rubatos and grandiose flourishes in the lengthy opening movement as if this were one of the prime middle concertos, only to scale back toward a gentler approach in the Finale. The Concerto may lack the soulful broodings of Rachmaninoff’s maturity, but it’s a pretty confident piece of work for an 18-year-old. Also, the bookends--Tchaikovsky’s “Capriccio Italien” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Capriccio Espagnol”--went well, with Harth-Bedoya giving the swaying tunes a nice lilt and letting Rimsky’s furious coda speak for itself.