Philharmonic’s Tchaikovsky Affirms a Standard’s Power

There is a theory that art music is, almost by definition, endlessly fresh and rehearsable. That seemed to be the idea behind guest conductor Emmanuel Krivine’s comfortable agenda for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Thursday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Just the basics--two familiar symphonies, no soloist, no extracurricular concept or context.

This is the sort of programming that has institutional critics fretting over social relevance and stagnating repertory. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 still represent the core of the symphonic business, where sonic and emotional expectations of the experience are most fulfilled.

Leaving aside the issue of whether those expectations are or should be changing, they were met here with unrepentant power and conviction. Krivine and the Philharmonic suggested that any problems with this music may lie more with disinterested performances than in convention-bound listening. They delivered a detailed and sweeping account of the Tchaikovsky, generous in spirit and impulse.

Krivine appreciates the dramatic impact of a huge dynamic scale and the rhetorical effect of paused silence. He values precision rather than exaggeration, but his Tchaikovsky Five is no dispassionately gleaming construct. Rather, it is an honestly warm and unreserved expression of serious sentiments, actively imagined but respectful of the score.

The Philharmonic played for him with great, concentrated energy and sumptuous sound. The piece was richly lit, as it must be, by woodwind solos full of pointed character. Even more impressive, though, were the climactic furies, seemingly spontaneous convulsions but impeccably balanced and articulate.

If Krivine had any thoughts on how these two pieces worked together, beyond a fundamental contrast of light and dark, he did not share them effectively. Some soft-grained oddities in the Scherzo and finale excepted, his unexceptional Beethoven stayed out of trouble, even where the composer went looking for it.

The scaled-back Philharmonic also played at a less inspired level. The performance was limber and happy in the main, but also had its scratchy and scrappy moments. Beethoven, however, can make do with much less help than Tchaikovsky needs, and came through handsomely enough.